2022 Pinot Noir, Mount Richmond Vineyard

Mount Richmond Vineyard is located in Gaston, Oregon and is special to us because it belongs to the winery, Elk Cove Vineyards. We have total respect for the Elk Cove team, their farming, and their winemaking, so the relationship is especially meaningful. In addition, the fact that they farm these grapes and make their own wine from them adds a unique connection in the process that we think is valuable.

The 2022 vintage is our ninth working with this fruit, and with time, I feel we have achieved an exquisite balance between the fruit, tannin, acid, and overall structure. This vineyard lends itself to dense, full-bodied Pinot Noirs, and we love that. The fine-tuning had to do with taming the tannins ever so slightly. In the beginning, we hauled the fruit on the stem from Oregon in picking bins. I believe that lengthy ride jostling up the highway with the fruit in contact with the stem was over accentuating the tannins. Now we process the fruit at Elk Cove and drive it up destemmed eliminating stem contact and therefore softening the tannins. They pick early in the morning, we show up with doughnuts, then we help on their line to sort and destem the fruit. That leaves pure fruit to jostle up the gorge to Walla Walla. This is a long way of saying, if you haven’t tried this wine in recent vintages, you should take a fresh look! It is a beautiful, deep, complex, balanced Pinot Noir.

This particular vintage is 100% Dijon clone 777 instead of our usual Pommard and Dijon clone 115. This change was a last minute offering from Adam at Elk Cove knowing that the other clones were going to be difficult in what turned out to be a really tricky vintage. It was a vintage that came to a rapid end, as they sometimes do in Oregon.

At first, a touch of earthiness then opens to bold expressive fruit. That fruit is an explosion of the aromas you find when you put your finger nail into the skin of a tangerine. I know it sounds a little unexpected, but sometimes an aroma is powerful and precise. Once you have had this initial, heady experience, then the floral notes and dark fruits start to peek through. Black mountain raspberry, boysenberries, and violets have been common descriptors for this wine, and this vintage is no exception. The berries combine with saddle leather, tobacco, and a hint of cream. This wine is generous and expressive, and it continues to be so, the longer it is open, a sign that it will age well. John Abbott – Winemaker