Wine & Spirits - Fall 2022 - 49

Top 100 Wineries
OREGON | CENTRAL WILLAMETTE VALLEY
The Eyrie Vineyards
The first to see vinous potential in the Willamette Valley, the Lett family
continues to maximize that potential, over fifty years in.
JaSON lETT
In the 1960s, DavID anD DIana Lett established
the Willamette Valley as a place to
grow pinot noir and chardonnay, producing
wines that have a sense of dirt in the
bottle, in the best way. Since 2009, their son,
Jason, has maintained that level of excellence,
doubling down on the terroir delivery
by moving to ambient-yeast fermentation
and adding site-specific bottlings, tripling
the number of cuvées. Along with an array
of whites-chardonnay, pinots blanc and
gris-and a range of pinot noirs, all farmed
organically, Lett offers insider favorites like
trousseau and old-vine pinot meunier (the
'73 is his personal desert-island Eyrie wine).
Through organic, no-till dry farming, Lett's
wines deliver a clear message of the red volcanic
Jory soil of the Dundee Hills, shaded
with nuance about each site. Perhaps the
most impressive thing about the line-up is
the versatility: entry-level wines can mature
for several years, and top cuvées can age for
three decades. -S.S.; tasting notes by P.J.C.
2019 Dundee Hills Estate Chardonnay ($27,
95 points) For 2019, the estate's fiftieth pick,
Jason Lett focused on vines descended from
a 1960s mass selection at the Draper Ranch.
This chardonnay smells rich, of pineapple and
candied ginger, pear and a hint of dried apricot.
And yet there is such tension on the palate you'll
forget the richness and focus instead on the texture,
layered and brimming with complex flavors.
Fascinating now, it should age beautifully. -P.J.C.
FOUNDED:
1965
WINEMAKERS:
Jason Lett and
Julio Hernandez
VITICULTURISTS:
Jason Lett and
José Garcia
OWNERS:
Jason and Diana Lett
ACRES OWNED:
57
ANNUAL PRODUCTION:
9,000 cases
ESTATE GROWN:
100%
FARMING PRACTICES:
Organic, regenerative
2016 Dundee Hills South Block Pinot Noir
($250, 94 points) Working with fruit from The
Eyrie's original vineyard, with plantings going
back to the late sixties, Jason Lett created a
wine with savory elements of tobacco and forest
floor that somehow propel and contribute to its
succulence. It's smoky when first poured, with a
scent of woozy plum and bramble, only to shore
up into a lean-lined, red-fruited gem, the dusty
tannins lending heft and succulence to the fruit.
2018 Dundee Hills Roland Green Pinot
Noir ($75, 95 points) Roland Green includes
an older plot of own-rooted vines adjacent to
a young block on heat-tolerant rootstocks. It
yielded a 2018 of admirable tension: You can
taste the old-vine poise in scents of turned soil
and tanbark, blood and cherries, along with
youthful notes of rose petals and star anise. The
wine is luxurious, the savor tugging at the fruit
with a gentle insistence, with a cherry-skin concentration
to the texture that's wildly appealing.
OREGON | WILLAMETTE VALLEY
Walter Scott
Ken Pahlow and Erica Landon craft Eola-Amity Hills chardonnays and
pinot noirs with thrilling levels of detail.
KEN PaHlOW aND
ERICa laNDON
Ken PahLow wILL be goIng to burgunDy
this fall. The cool vintage in Oregon, in
line, he says, with 2010 and 2011, affords
him time in September to work harvest
in France and return for his own. Pahlow
speaks candidly and often of Burgundian
technique; he's comparing notes with JeanFrançois
Coche, with Christophe Roumier,
with his old colleague from Evening Land
days, Dominique Lafon, and he's more than
willing to test out something he's learned
there in his own cellar. For pinot noir, that
means gentle pumpovers, modest pigéage to
address the whole clusters in the mix, and
long fermentations characterized by a warm
middle period, which seems to broaden the
texture and result in exceptionally saturated
flavor. It's there in the 2019 X Novo,
Pahlow's second vintage from Craig Williams's
small Eola Hills vineyard, where he
planted more than 15 clones of pinot noir.
Tasted recently, it's hard to overstate the textural
experience, a wine with otherworldly
levels of depth and freshness. It's one of our
Top 100 Wines of the Year. -P.J.C.
2019 Eola-Amity Hills X Novo Vineyard Pinot
Noir ($65, 96 points) Walter Scott gets all of X
Novo's pinot noir, eight barrels' worth, from this
tiny vineyard. Tasted last fall and, again, more
recently, it's a wine that reveals itself slowly,
yielding an herbaceous lacework of flavors,
thyme and sage, then penetrating red fruits-
red cherry, red plum-at once concentrated and
fresh, luminous, full of flavor, devoid of weight.
2019 Mt. Pisgah Freedom Hill Vineyard Pinot
Noir ($65, 95 points) The Dusschee family
farm a hilltop in the Coast Range, a distinctive
vineyard on Bellpine sedimentary soils, one that
helped make the case for the Willamette Valley's
newest AVA, Mt. Pisgah. This wine is cool and
vinous when first poured, with smoky, savory and
foresty tannins, a wild berry core of fruit lying
beneath; tasting it, I had an image of Clos Vougeot
on a foggy winter morning. The fruit takes
on a deeper cast with air, a dark cherry cloud,
concentrated but transparent.
FOUNDED:
2008
WINEMAKER:
Ken Pahlow
OWNERS:
Erica Landon and
Ken Pahlow
ANNUAL PRODUCTION:
5,500 cases
2019 Eola-Amity Hills Sojeau Vineyard Pinot
Noir ($65, 94 points) Sojeau is set on a high,
rocky, wind-exposed ridge near the southwest
corner of the appellation. The site produced a
cool 2019, its spicy whole-cluster note overlying
tart red-cherry fruit. With air the savor and the
fruit notes coalesce, becoming seamless, full of
flavor and assertive texture.
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WINE & SPIR IT S
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Wine & Spirits - Fall 2022

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