Andrew JeffordAJ | Anthony Rose AR | David Williams DW


chic. Pour splashily or decant and you’ll find much to enjoy. Principally fruit, with little tannin and the acidity zipped up beneath the fruit- sugar charm—but it really sings. A round orb of songbird Pinot. Deftly delicious. 2024–28. | 89 AR | This is youthfully vivid in color, and although a tad shy in aroma, there’s a feeling of dark- berry fruit, such as dark cherry and loganberry, lurking in the background, the oak, which is unobtrusive, perhaps holding it back a little; the fruit is distinctively Pinot Noir, with an attractive spectrum of red-berry flavors nicely supported by a juiciness of texture and soft yet integrated acidity, all creating a seamless whole that makes for a wine that’s approachable now but will benefit from another two to four years of aging in bottle. 2024–28. | 90 DW | Easygoing succulence of ripe, sweet cherry and plum, very bright, finger-staining freshness of fruit, with fine, ripe-fruit tannins and a juicy fruit-borne finish: a charming Oregonian “village” wine. 2024–28. | 89


Ponzi Vineyards Abetina Willamette Valley The Laurelwood District AVA 2021 (13.5% ABV)


| 89


AJ | Dark black-red. Firmly oaky, and a little too much in truth, in that it muscles out the wine beneath. But a quality assemblage, for all that... so give it a year or two. You see the fruit much more clearly on the palate, and it’s broad, mouthcoating, with violet as well as raspberry; medium length but very satisfying. This palate bodes well for excellent development ahead, and the wine’s concentration, poise, and class mark it out. Certainly a point or two more once that oak has settled down into the wine. 2024–32. | 91 AR | Medium-ruby in color and just starting to show some evolution, with light garnet at the rim of the glass. This is quite overtly oaky when you smell it, the oak more in savory than in sweet mode, asking questions; happily, the oak is better integrated when you taste, dissolving nicely into a wine whose distinctive berry-fruit Pinot Noir identity is initially satisfying but then takes you in the direction of some rarer, chewy, dry tannins toward the finish; time and food can both serve to mitigate that slight harshness, and I’m sure that in the right circumstances, they will. 2024–28. | 90 DW | Sweet, cherry-cola oak to the fore, which sits a little heavily on some immaculate red fruit: lovely, unforced acidity, but it’s not hanging together entirely comfortably at the moment. 2024–30. | 87


JK Carriere Wines Gemini Vineyard Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Chehalem Mountains 2021 (12.5% ABV)


| 89


AJ | One of the two deepest of the Chehalem contingent: deep black-scarlet. Lacks a little aromatic focus and precision: gruffly fruity, with little charm—but delivers. Some cereal grain and raisin. On the palate, too, the ripeness seems to have got away here, and the end result has some baked flavors and textural rigidity, as well as that telltale cereal-grain note on the aromatics. 2024–29. | 87


AR | This is vivid and deep-colored. Still a tad shy in aroma, but showing potential; and after the aroma, the fruit is quite concentrated and firmly extracted, medium-bodied, with initially some sweetly ripe berry-fruit flavors, turning quite quickly toward a savory character in which the acidity and the drying tannins start to dominate even before the fruit is allowed really to express itself; it may be that this will become more enjoyable with time, but it’s a bit of a struggle at the moment. 2024–28. | 88 DW | An energetic push-and-pull of salty-savory, almost bloody and sweetly-berried tones, plus a classic Pinot forest-floor character, plentiful youthful, ripe tannins, and an echoing, salty finish. Lightly structured yet concentrated; full of intrigue. 2024–30. | 93


DAVID WILLIAMS’S VERDICT


As was the case for many European wine lovers of my generation, Oregon was the source of the first non-Burgundian Pinot Noirs to really impress me—wines good enough to dispel any lingering French claims that the variety was incapable of traveling successfully, and which offered real “pinosity” in a mode that was distinctive rather than merely imitative. For good or ill, first impressions, in wine


as in life, are hard to shake, and those initial examples shaped a view that has only been reinforced by my interactions with Oregon Pinot in the years since—which is to say I very much looked forward to this tasting as a chance to sample what I was sure was going to be a selection of sensitively made, high-quality Pinot Noirs. I wasn’t disappointed. This tasting was a


showcase for a quality I’ve always treasured in Oregon Pinot, a quality that I also found in abundance in wines featured in the sister tasting of the state’s Chardonnays conducted by WFW last year, and which I described, in my summary at the time, as “an easy, natural balance.” If anything, however, the Oregonian achievement with Pinot in this respect is even more impressive, if only because of the relative


TOP WINES


Lingua Franca Wines The Plow Eola-Amity Hills Willamette Valley 2019 95


Lingua Franca Wines Tongue’n Cheek Eola-Amity Hills Willamette Valley 2021 95


Evening Land Vineyards La Source Seven Springs Estate Eola-Amity Hills Willamette Valley 2019 94


Walter Scott Sojeau Vineyard Eola-Amity Hills Willamette Valley 2021 94


00 Wines Hyland McMinnville Willamette Valley 2021 93


Abbott Claim Vineyard Pinot Noir Yamhill-Carlton Willamette Valley 2021 93


The Beaux Frères Vineyard Ribbon Ridge Willamette Valley 2021 93


Bethel Heights Vineyard Estate Eola-Amity Hills Willamette Valley 2022 93


Brick House Evelyn’s Pinot Noir Ribbon Ridge Willamette Valley 2021 93


JK Carriere Wines Gemini Vineyard Pinot Noir Chehalem Mountains Willamette Valley 2021 93


Evening Land Vineyards Summum Seven Springs Estate Eola-Amity Hills Willamette Valley 2022 93


Evesham Wood Vineyard Le Puits Sec Eola-Amity Hills Willamette Valley 2021 93


Ponzi Vineyards Reserve Pinot Noir Estate Grown The Laurelwood District Willamette Valley 2019 93


Walter Scott Koosah Vineyard Eola-Amity Hills Willamette Valley 2021 93


00 Wines Shea Yamhill-Carlton Willamette Valley 2021 93


scarcity, on a global level, of convincing Pinot wines: while excellent Chardonnay is being made all over the world (and has been for some time), comparably fine Pinot, it seems to me, is still, for all the progress made from Central Otago to Yarra and the Santa Rita Hills, much less evenly distributed. In general, Oregonian Pinot producers


have been much more successful at finding a consistent ripeness sweet spot than their peers elsewhere in the New World: certainly, this tasting had none of the switching between extremes of soupy extraction and reedy thinness I’ve found in recent tastings of Californian Pinot Noir (as good as the best wines are). There was a consistency in this run of alluringly fleshy but fluent wines which owes as much to winemaking disposition and self-confidence as it does to climate, and which was also a hallmark of the Chardonnay tasting. But while, with Chardonnay, that consistency may have come at the expense of the truly thrilling (and the truly hamfisted) here (perhaps inevitably with fickle Pinot) the highs were higher (and the lows lower), with some genuinely outstanding, site-specific wines that are a match for Pinot anywhere.


McKinlay Vineyards Estate Pinot Noir Willamette Valley Willamette Valley 2021 (13% ABV)


| 89


AJ | Deep, dark red-scarlet, but more translucent than its other four straight Willamette peers. Enticing, fresh-air and rain-shower cherry fruits take the lead, with something a little tarrier behind. Attractive. Pure, mid-length, with slightly more secondary and “grown-up” fruit than those other straight Willamettes. Has a little bit of lean and green in there somewhere, which adds to the general air of authenticity and Europhilia. Plenty of Bourgogne Rouge is not as good as this—and in a flight of Bourgogne Rouge, I’m not at all sure that it would be spotted as alien. Delicious mealtime Pinot. 2024–29. | 90


THE WORLD OF FINE WINE | ISSUE 87 | 2025 | 215


SAVOR: OREGON PINOT NOIR


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