Pinot Noir can produce sturdy, long lived wines that at their epoch deliver some of the world’s most stunningly complex bottles. It can also make simply, fruity, effortlessly drinkable on any occasion table wine. However, the former are extremely finicky about storage, age, and drinking window, and as such they often fail to deliver on their promise. And the latter are more often than not overripe and one dimensional, lacking any sense of grape or place. Producing a wine that is both immensely pleasurable on release, and also perfectly balanced with savory earth and complex structure is truly a rare feat. These days the Willamette Valley seems to deliver this bit of magic most often, and today’s beauty from Raptor Ridge demonstrates this with aplomb. Joyously drinkable now, plenty of aging potential, and it is brimming with unmistakable Pinot-ness. Oh, and since it is Oregon, it’s also a stupendous deal.
Raptor Ridge was founded in 1995 by Scott and Annie Schull, who started out on a hobby scale from their barn in Hillsboro. They cleared an old cherry orchard to create their 27-acre estate vineyard, which is planted to Pinot Noir and Grüner Veltliner (and is supplemented by fruit from contract growers). They opened their winery on the estate vineyard site in 2009. For Annie and Scott farming has always been key, both in their estate vineyards and with those top vineyards that they purchase fruit from. Everything is sustainable and practicing organic, and some parcels have been fully certified as organic or biodynamic. The goal, whether the fruit is destined for their award winning single vineyard bottlings or today’s best in class value “villages style” blend, is to harvest the berries just as they reach peak ripeness, and not a moment after.
In the cellar, the winemaking for the Willamette Valley cuvée is precise, simple, and straightforward. That perfectly ripe fruit from four vineyards–Crawford Beck, Tuscowallame Estate, Atticus, Bellevue–is destemmed and then undergoes a cold maceration in tanks before fermentation. The finished wine is then racked into French oak barrels, mostly used, for ten months before bottling with a light filtration. The mix of terroirs from the various vineyards includes classic Willakenzie (aka marine sediment), Jory (aka volcanic rock and sand), and Loess, and this assures a balanced wine that is an exuberantly transparent reflection of Willamette Pinot Noir.
As advertised, the Raptor Ridge Pinot Noir is a pop and pour wine, that said, I do recommend a brief splash decant in order to allow the initial match-stick aromas from the Stelvin closure to dissipate. Serve it cool, around 60 degrees, in nice Burgundy stems and you’ll unlock a trove of red and black fruits–Morello cherry, wild blackberry, red currant–that are followed by savory notes of allspice, lilac, violet, cocoa nut, porcini, and wet earth. The wonderfully silky texture is balanced perfectly by persistent, fine grained tannins and sunny acidity, and the finish is supple and mineral driven. Pinot like this is incredibly versatile as a food pairing, working with anything on the grill or smoker, but also perfect with rich pastas or even spicy curries. But the classic move is to grill up some fresh Pacific salmon, and maybe some wild mushrooms too. I’m quite confident that this wine will age very well for the next five to ten years, the trick will be keeping your hands off a few bottles since they’re so tasty right now!
