Known for the last couple of decades among fine wine collectors as a source of long-lived top-quality Pinot Noirs, the Eola-Amity Hills region is now an official “AVA subregion” (American Viticultural Area) of the larger ‘Willamette Valley’ AVA. As a result, beginning with the 2004 harvest, the place-name ‘Eola-Amity Hills’ may appear on wine labels if the fruit was sourced from the special and tiny region east of Highway 99W and west of the Willamette River, just north of Salem.
The vineyards of the Eola-Amity Hills are mostly steep and east-facing, and they are all cooled in the summer by “Van Duzer Corridor’ ocean breezes. This unique terroir creates wines with a firm acidic backbone and an ability to improve over many years in the bottle; Eola-Amity Hills wines from the 1993, 1999, 2000, and 2002 vintages, or example, are just now starting to open their very long drinking windows.
So, when you next carve up a simple rack of lamb or even an elaborate beef Wellington, you might want to compliment your meal with one of these fine examples of the best of Oregon Pinot Noir, from the Eola-Amity Hills:
Tasting Notes:
Intensely concentrated, exhibiting dark cherry fruit flavors, the Southeast Block wines have played a special historic role, in vintage after vintage, in the building of the reputation of the Eola Hills region.
Cristom ‘Jessie Vineyard’ 2002 Pinot Noir (Drinking Window: Now to 2012) $46
Roasted-red-raspberry flavors that linger on the palate. Other vintages worth seeking out from Cristom’s Jessie Vineyard include the 1999, 2000, 2004, and 2005 vintages.
Evesham Wood ‘Seven Springs Vineyard’ 2004 Pinot Noir (Now to 2014) $29
This label always represents good value. This wine tastes of dark red fruits laced with freshness-bestowing acidity, the hallmark of a typical Eola Hills wine.
Elegant yet full-bodied, this raspberry-flavored and floral-scented wine is made by the serious and cerebral Mark Vlossak, formerly winemaker at McMinnville’s Panther Creek winery.