2014 Chapter 24 Vineyards The Flood Pinot Noir Willamette Valley 750 ml

Finding “Top-Drawer Vosne-Romanée” In Oregon

The top tier of Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is garnering more attention and getting more expensive by the day, so we consider it a massive win that we’ve secured Chapter 24’s sculptured, ruby-hued 2014 The Flood Pinot Noir. It’s a luminescent Pinot from Mark Tarlov, the co-founder of Oregon’s standard-bearing Evening Land, and we’ve got it at the best price in the nation. 

Together at Chapter 24, Tarlov and star Burgundy winemaker Louis-Michel Liger-Belair have cracked the code of Oregon terroir by seeking out Willamette’s grand cru plots—and by most critics’ accounts, they have found them. Wine Spectator cited the winery as one of the promising new stars of Willamette Valley Pinot, Wine & Spirits named it one of their Top 100, and Vinous even compared the 2014 Chapter 24 The Flood to “top-drawer Vosne-Romanée.” 

We fell head over heels when we tasted the 2014 Chapter 24 Vineyards The Flood Pinot Noir Willamette Valley, a standout from Oregon’s historic 2014 vintage. It boasts a dense bouquet of red cherry, sassafras, wild herbs, and leather, and is luscious on the palate, with honed, tensile tannins. Simply put, this is Burgundy meets Oregon, and when it gets this damn good—let alone at this all-too-rare value price for upper-crust Willamette Valley—you don’t wait. You buy.

Vintner Mark Tarlov has long believed that the most elegant terroir in America lies in Oregon. His first venture, Evening Land, raised the bar for the state’s Pinot Noir, attracting talents like Volnay veteran Dominique Lafon. After selling that winery (which was eventually snapped up by famed vintners Raj Parr and Sashi Moorman), Tarlov knew he had more to say about world-class Pinot Noir in Oregon—and that the vocabulary he needed had to do with rocks. He created Chapter 24 to find the next great terroir-focused Pinot expression, and for Old World guidance, turned to star talent Louis-Michel Liger-Belair, who had parlayed a few of his family’s old parcels into a leading Vosne-Romanée domaine.

After tasting grapes from 69 growers throughout the Willamette Valley, the American and the Frenchman found two clearly distinguished styles: toned wines derived from volcanic soils, and supple, harmonious Pinot from sedimentary soils left centuries ago by ancient floods. The latter—today’s wine—they would call The Flood, and it is one of the most gripping and precise expressions of Willakenzie soil ever made in the valley.

The 2014 vintage did more than almost any other in recent memory to show the Olympian heights that Oregon can achieve. “It is easy to become inured to vintage hype, but in 2014 enthusiasm is warranted,” says Vinous. “With the 2014s, you’re going to taste winemakers’ Platonic Pinot Noirs.” Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate raved over the “perfect conditions” that were warm enough to achieve rich, ripe red-berry concentration, while still maintaining a strong, bright streak of acidity.

The result is a classically structured bombshell of a Willamette Pinot Noir, the kind of complete yet totally individualistic New World wine that critics have been waiting for in Oregon. Perhaps you’ve been waiting too. Today, at just about 40% off the list price, your number has been called.