In addition to being delicious, Haden Fig has a great story behind it: winemaker Erin Nuccio got his start in wine at a retail store in Washington, D.C., then worked in wine distribution in Boston before following the siren call of the West Coast. Attending enology school in California while also working in vineyards, he realized that his ultimate destination would be Oregon’s Willamette Valley – a place he’d been besotted with since his first sips of Willamette Pinot back in the D.C. retail store. He found work with Russ Raney at Oregon’s Evesham Wood (where he remains the winemaker), and simultaneously developed the network of vineyard sources needed to launch his Haden Fig label.

This wine is sourced from the Bjornson Vineyard in the Amity Hills, a 28-acre parcel within striking distance of legendary sites like Bethel Heights. Nuccio describes his Bjornson-designate wine as the most “fruit forward” of his offerings, which is almost amusing when you compare this bright and balanced effort with the horde of fruit-bomb Pinots gunning for big scores on the West Coast. If anything, this wine makes a convincing case for the superiority of Willamette Valley as a Pinot Noir terroir, with its more northerly latitude and cooler climate; most California Pinot harvesting is already finished before Willamette’s even begins. This longer hang time is evident in wines like Nuccio’s, which has been given the time to develop aromatic complexity and physiological maturity without becoming over-ripe.

This is especially true in the Eola-Amity hills, which sit almost smack in the middle of the broader Willamette Valley, at the receiving end of the Van Duzer corridor. This break in Oregon’s coastal range (and, a well-traveled tourist route) funnels Pacific air inland, and this cooling influence, combined with a heavier presence of volcanic basalt in Eola-Amity’s soils, lend wines from sites like Bjornson their characteristic nerve and detail.

And what detail! The nose is a high-toned mix of wild strawberry, black cherry and huckleberry, intermingled with more savory notes of hibiscus, damp forest, wet roses and wet earth. Imagine picking berries in a forest just after it has rained, taking in all the aromas of the humid earth and wet leaves: that’s the sensation this wine calls vividly to mind. Silky and medium-bodied, I’d be tempted to mistake this wine for a village-level Chambolle-Musigny or Morey-Saint-Denis from Burgundy; but, there’s that touch of additional cleanliness here that sends us back to Willamette Valley: at this price point, you’d have to taste your way through quite a few unsatisfying Burgundies to get something of this quality. The fact is, you just don’t kiss many frogs in Oregon – the wines are clean and sound and yet evocative of their thickly forested surroundings at the same time. The savor and smoke we so desire from Pinot Noir is definitely there, with perhaps a bit less funk.

For me, this wine is ready to drink now and over the next few years, though if you are building a cellar it will effortlessly age for 5-10 years and gain complexity each year. Serve it at about 60 degrees in Burgundy stems and swirl with vigor to release its amazing bouquet. All I can think about when I sip and savor this elegant yet woodsy wine is a classic Willamette-style Salmon bake, where the silvery fillets are speared on stakes and slow-cooked over hot coals. There’s still time to make that happen.