I am curious what you all think are the most reputable single vineyards in the WV for PN.
Shea tops my list. Of course there are many others such as Freedom Hill and Roserock (though this is exclusive to Drouhin.)
When I was in the Napa Valley, Hyde and Hudson vineyards were a couple of the top vineyards.
Thank you.
Eric
Interestingā¦I hadnāt thought about that. I think answers here are going to be heavily weighted by favoriate produces. Without deep diving, I think many OR Pinot producers draw from estate vineyards, so itāll be tough to de-couple the vineyard from the winery.
Eyrie Vineyard has to be up at the top, right? Durant too. Also, I think what Goodfellow does with Whistling Ridge Vineyard is great, as well as Murto Vineyard (Belle Pente) and Belle Pente Vineyard.
Shea is a very large vineyard, so lots of fruit to go around to lost of wineries.
Shea tops my list for Oregon vineyard most likely to be mistakened for a California vineyard.
Indeed. The one time great Seven Springs vineyard is a good example.
The title of the post bothers me. Which Oregon vineyards are disreputable?
Agreed that there will be few āgreatā vineyards that multiple wineries source fruit from. Many of the great sites are estate vineyards for the winery, so then is it the winery or the vineyard (or likely a combination of both) that makes the wine great?
Hereās my quick list:
Arcus Estate (Archery Summit)
Red Hills Estate (Archery Summit)
Ayoub Estate
Colene Clemens
La Colina
Temperance Hill
Cristomās vineyards
I think that the vineyards that sell to a larger number of wineries will be more likely to make most peopleās lists simply because of familiarity and because a higher number of producers of the fruit increases the opportunity for someone to excell in any given year.
Shea, Freedom Hill, Temperance Hill, Hyland, etc.
And a lot of smaller/estate vineyards may not be thought of as a āgreatā vineyards due to producer recognition, i.e. John Thomas vineyard and Clos Electrique vineyard.
Bigger vineyards often also enjoy an advantage in that if a vineyard that produces 150 tons of fruit going into 100 fermenters, there is a wider range for luck to play a part. The best fruit almost always makes it into a terroir based bottling but if 90% of the fruit goes to the WV base bottling is it really a great terroir?
And at some point it is subjective. I have a lot of respect for Dick Shea, and both Blair Trathan and Chris Mazepink made phenomenal wines from the vineyard (IMO), but the typical Shea bottling isnāt my own personal preference, nor am I inclined to subjugate my opinion to reviewers such as Harvey Steiman or RP as they just seemed to prefer bigger is better (again IMO).
That said some ideas(I am sure I will miss some obvious ones):
Eola Amity Hills:
Cristom-Marjorie (the single highest number of smashingly great Oregon PNs in my experiece come from here.)
Cristom-Jessie
Bethel Heights-Flat Block and SE Block
Lewman Vineyard
Temperance Hill-West Field, Upper Bench, North Block
Sojeau-(see Walter Scottās bottling)
Ex Novo (unquestionable GC Chardonnay site)
Seven Springs
Honorable mention: Le Puits Sec, Bjornsen
Ribbon Ridge:
Brickhouse
Ridgecrest
Beaux Freres
Patricia Green-Wadensville and Etzel for sure(Jim can fill this out)
Whistling Ridge
Dundee Hills:
White Rose
Thomas
Clos Electrique
Abbey Ridge
Worden Hill
Maresh
Arcus
Knudsen
Tualatin Hills AVA:
Bednarik (for sure)
Cancilla
Cherry Grove
McMinnville:
Four Winds (Chardonnay)
Meredith Mitchell
I think that a number of people would put Freedom Hill on a list of best terroirs, and in the past 10 years, the wines from PGC, Kelley Fox, and Walter Scott make a strong argument. In the old days it tended to be foursquare and tannic, but current farming practices really seem to have the quality of wines moving up very high (as do the winemakers the vineyard is pairing with).
This is a list that is highly limited by my personal experience, as I donāt taste widely throughout the valley (though I probably taste more OPN than most).
Hi Bill. Thank you for your input. The title was not intended to deem any vineyards ādisreputable.ā As we all know, some (single) vineyards have much more acclaim than others. We can easily look at California and Burgundy for many such examples.
Agreed! Thank you.
This is also helping to open MY eyes to some vineyards that I am not familiar with.
Valid point.
In some cases, itās the winery that makes it great.
In other cases, a particular vineyardās fruit quality is such that many producers want to buy fruit from it.
Thank you for the suggestions.
Very cool! Thank you Marcus.
Yes, I love Clos Electrique as well.
I love what many, including Ken (Wright,) are doing by focusing on SVD PN.
As for Shea, yes, there are multiple producers. A horizontal of Shea VD would be fun. (Or Freedom Hill, Temperance Hill, etc.)
Come on, Eileen is way better than Marjorie.
I also really appreciate how producers are focusing on individual sites, and Ken Wright definitely deserves recognition for being one of the earliest to really focus on a lot of diverse sites.
Having worked with Shea fruit, a couple of things stand out regarding the idea of a horizontal tasting:
itās a very big vineyard, by Oregon standards, and the diverse range of micro-climats and clonal diversity in plantings there would make comparisons of quality more challenging than one might expect. (The same is true of Temperance Hill, but I feel that Shea at nearly twice the size of THV is even more diverse in itās expression).
pick dates, clones, elevage, and vine age would all need to be available to gain any meaningful insight into the results of a tasting.
I saw what you did thereā¦
Seems like Abby Ridge deserves mention.
Agreed, I edited my post to include Abbey Ridge and Worden Hill vineyard(ex Oracle) as they are contiguous and were planted at the same time.
I get the joke, but the discussion on Marjorie highlights another interesting aspect, vine age. Marjorie bottling has included replanted vines around 2012 vintage. The late 2000ās wine were all from own rooted 20+ year old vines.
In prior discussion, the correlation between āgreatā sites and vine age is clear. Maybe itās the case that the best sites were planted first, and these sites continue to be the best sites in the future, weāll see.
For my money, the Ribbon ridge vineyards around PGC/Whistling ridge/BF are pretty special, and I really like the Brickhouse estate wines.
For Dundee I really like Maresh, both what they do and what Kelley has done. I know of at least one winemaker that thinks Abbey Ridge is the best vineyard site in the WV, I trust his palate and heās tasted more Dundee wine that I will in my lifeā¦
Thank you for this list. I am trying to teach myself about OR Pinot, as I know very little about it. When you write āMareshā do you mean Arterberry-Maresh? I cannot find a producer by the lone name Maresh. Or do you mean that all wines made at the Maresh vineyard are worth consideration? Or are you referring to the wines of Jim Maresh before he changed the name to include Arterberfy? If you have a direct link to Maresh the producer, I would greatly appreciate that.
Cheers.
Sadly, Belle Pente lost access to Murto after the ā19 vintage.
No! I didnāt realize that. Too badā¦I liked the wines a lot.