Notes: Tempranillo is a great grape for rose and in the Willamette Valley it is particularly well-suited for it since there is really no possibility for it to get ripe enough to turn into a viable red wine grape. Therefore, it can receive a lengthy hangtime without risk of losing acidity or gaining brix in manners that would risk the overall integrity of the wine’s balance and structure. Ros is a favorite of mine and is probably the single category of wine that I drink the most on the regular. Great examples of it are aromatic, refreshing, delicious, light yet intense and a perfect foil for so many types of food. We certainly wanted to create a wine that was well in line with the types and styles of ros that we enjoy. This bottling has great acidity, but is tempered just enough to allow it to walk the fine line that allows wines of this nature to still feel like it has a level of sweetness to it that makes it completely enjoyable (despite being completely bone dry). This wine is truly balanced. It has lovely fruit mixed with a rich mouthfeel and a complex midpalate and finish. This bottle is likely to disappear over a quick Thursday lunch.

This bottling allows us to accomplish two things that are very important to us as a winery. The first thing is that it allows us to be incredibly detailed about the barrels we select for our vineyard designated wines, so they true expressions of the site on a year in and year out basis. The Willamette Valley Pinot Noir bottling “Reserve” is almost entirely made up of barrels that simply were not included in a more prestigious bottling, which allows us to choose from larger sections of our diverse vineyards. Secondly, it allows us to create a blended wine that has a degree of consistency to it each vintage that is of incredibly high-quality and will retail for under $30.

In short, this wine is a smoking deal! The 2017 Willamette Valley Reserve was rated as the #39 wine by The Wine Spectator and 93pts because of its unusual combination of quality, price and availability.

This bottling comes from terrific sources. The 2019 has a make-up of unique pedigree for a wine at its pricing. Slightly over 33% comes from our Estate Vineyard from which we bottled 4 individual single vineyard/block bottlings in 2019. Other sources of significance are Freedom Hill Vineyard which is one of the most famous (and deservedly so) sites in the state, Corrine (formerly Olenik) Vineyard which we have bottled single vineyard Pinots from since 2009, Wind Ridge Vineyard which is an older Ribbon Ridge AVA site, Anderson Family Vineyard which is new to us but is a 30 year-old organically farmed site in the Dundee Hills (and we are making a vineyard designated Pinot from it in 2019) and a vineyard so famous that the winery that owns it won’t let us put the name of the vineyard on the vineyard designated bottling of it that we do let alone tell you it is one of the mainstays in our least expensive wine! You get the picture. This isn’t throw away stuff mixed together and then hope for the best. This is an intentional wine filled with basically declassified single vineyard quality wine in it.

This wine carries the breadth of the winery in other ways as well. From completely destemmed grapes to 100% whole cluster fermentations, all winemaking stylistic decisions are represented within this bottling. The two most important AVAs in the Willamette Valley to us (and likely the two most prestigious and sought after) are Ribbon Ridge (where we are located) and the Dundee Hills. 75% of this wine comes from those two AVAs. To show those in their pure fruit form about 75% of the volume of this wine comes from neutral barrels while less than 3% of are new barrels.

Production: 4,145 cases bottled.