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St. Innocent, Freedom Hill Vineyard, Pinot Noir

Oregon, United States 2013 (750mL)
$35.00
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SommSelect

St. Innocent, Freedom Hill Vineyard, Pinot Noir

About a month ago, the SommSelect team enjoyed a highly educational field trip to Oregon’s beautiful Willamette Valley. One of the big takeaways for me was how many great wines—especially reds—there were to be found from the 2013 vintage. Even casual observers of the Oregon wine scene know that the more concentrated wines of 2014 received greater hype, but many of my favorites during our many visits were 2013s.
As gorgeously illustrated by this 2013 “Freedom Hill Vineyard” Pinot Noir from St. Innocent, the vintage delivered wines with a very bright, perfumed, Old World sensibility to them. We’ve come to count on the Willamette Valley as our go-to New World alternative to Burgundy, and this wine is the latest in a long line of mind-blowing values from the region. What a treat for us when St. Innocent proprietor and winemaker Mark Vlossak brought us into his warehouse, grabbed a pallet jack, and extracted a big stack of cases of this wine. How it was still available is beyond me, but we’re not complaining: Very few Pinot Noirs from anywhere can top the quality-to-price of this one. If you missed out on our other “library” offer from St. Innocent a few weeks ago, today’s your day—this is a Willamette Valley benchmark that needs to be on your radar!
Mark Vlossak got his start in the Willamette Valley in the late-1980s, as an apprentice to Fred Arterberry, who was the original cellar master at David Lett’s pioneering Eyrie Vineyards. Vlossak produced his first St. Innocent wines in 1988 at Arterberry’s facility—which was across the street from Eyrie—using fruit sourced primarily from the Seven Springs Vineyard. Over the years, as his vineyard sources expanded and his production grew, Vlossak constructed a winery in Salem, which served him well up until 2006, when he entered into a unique partnership with Tim and Kari Ramey, who had purchased the former O’Connor Vineyard (from which Vlossak had long bottled a vineyard-designate wine) and re-named it Zenith. The St. Innocent winery is now located at the Zenith Vineyard, sharing space with an events facility run by the Rameys.

In addition to Zenith Vineyard, which is within the Eola-Amity Hills AVA, St. Innocent works with six other prime sites across the Willamette Valley, including the source for this wine “Freedom Hill,” which qualifies in most experts’ minds as a ‘Grand Cru’ site (in addition to St. Innocent, other high-profile wineries using Freedom Hill fruit include Ken Wright, Patricia Green, Walter Scott, and Evesham Wood). First planted in 1982 by Dan and Helen Dusschee on a gently sloping hillside southwest of Salem, Freedom Hill is a former seabed, with the sedimentary soils that characterize much of the Willamette Valley. Located further west, and closer to the coast range, than many key Willamette Valley sites (and very much in the path of the Van Duzer corridor winds blowing in from the Pacific through a gap in that range), this is a cool site known for Pinot Noirs of great freshness, perfume, and structure—all of which is on display in St. Innocent’s 2013.

Vlossak used 100% destemmed grapes in this bottling, fermenting it in stainless steel and aging it in French oak barrels (27% new) for 16 months before bottling. In the glass, the wine is a vibrant ruby with garnet highlights at the rim, with a highly perfumed nose of black cherry, raspberry, rhubarb, black tea, underbrush, and warm baking spices. There’s a sappy core of fruit but also a firm tannic structure lending the wine great focus and lift. The fruit concentration is significant, but the wine also has great “crunch” and a perfumed, very long finish. It is singing right now, and is just now starting to enter its peak drinking window—which I expect to continue well past 2020. By all means lay a few bottles down, but at this price I wouldn’t hesitate to open some now: decant it about 30 minutes before serving in Burgundy stems at 60-65 degrees, and pair it up with some pork shanks with a ‘bbq’ tilt to the preparation. This wine will wrap them in a soft hug. Enjoy!
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Country
United States
Region
Oregon
Sub-Region
United StatesWillamette Valley
Soil
Marine Sediment
Farming
Sustainable
Blend
Pinot Noir
Alcohol
12.0
OAK
27% New French
TEMP.
60
Glassware
Burgundy Stems
Drinking
Now-2022
Decanting
30 Minutes
Pairing
Braised Pork Shanks

United States

Washington

Columbia Valley

Like many Washington wines, the “Columbia Valley” indication only tells part of the story: Columbia Valley covers a huge swath of Central
Washington, within which are a wide array of smaller AVAs (appellations).

Oregon

Willamette Valley

Oregon’s Willamette Valley has become an elite winegrowing zone in record time. Pioneering vintner David Lett, of The Eyrie Vineyard, planted the first Pinot Noir in the region in 1965, soon to be followed by a cadre of forward-thinking growers who (correctly) saw their wines as America’s answer to French
Burgundies. Today, the Willamette
Valley is indeed compared favorably to Burgundy, Pinot Noir’s spiritual home. And while Pinot Noir accounts for 64% of Oregon’s vineyard plantings, there are cool-climate whites that must not be missed.

California

Santa Barbara

Among the unique features of Santa Barbara County appellations like Ballard Canyon (a sub-zone of the Santa Ynez Valley AVA), is that it has a cool, Pacific-influenced climate juxtaposed with the intense luminosity of a southerly
latitude (the 34th parallel). Ballard Canyon has a more north-south orientation compared to most Santa Barbara AVAs, with soils of sandy
clay/loam and limestone.

California

Paso Robles

Situated at an elevation of 1,600 feet, it is rooted in soils of sandy loam and falls within the Highlands District of the Paso Robles AVA.

New York

North Fork

Wine growers and producers on Long Island’s North Fork have traditionally compared their terroir to that of Bordeaux and have focused on French varieties such as Cabernet Franc and Merlot.

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