2014 Patricia Green Cellars Pinot Noir Freedom Hill Vineyard Dijon 115 750 ml

Spectator’s 94-97pt “Vintage of a Lifetime” on Freedom Hill

In early April, we attended the first “Willamette” Pinot Noir auction, Oregon’s answer to Napa’s Premiere Napa Valley. Hundreds of collectors, retailers, and distributors came to The Allison Inn & Spa in Newberg loaded for bear, ready to drop thousands on 5-to-10-case lots of stunning single-vineyard 2014 Pinot Noirs from what many are calling “the vintage of a lifetime.”

We arrived early and spent two hours working the ballroom at the pre-auction tasting, devising our bidding strategy. By the time we settled into our third-row seats, we’d narrowed our list to just eight wines, including barrel samples from Bergström, Soléna Estate, WillaKenzie, Patricia Green, Trisaetum, and Cristom. Authorized to bid up to $6,000 per lot, we were ready for action, numbered paddles in hand.

But it would take less than 15 minutes to realize that “Willamette” was too rich for our blood. Every wild-berry 2014 Pinot Noir that had piqued our interest at the pre-auction tasting would fetch over $10,000 per lot! We were paupers with a popgun in a high-stakes shootout.

For those of you who have filled your cellars with entry-level 2014 Pinot Noirs from the likes of WillaKenzie, Soléna Estate, and Bergström, you know all about the deepest, darkest, juiciest, Russian River-like Pinots ever crafted in the Pacific Northwest. Now, as the top producers release their top blends, as we discovered at “Willamette,” the market is overheated, with demand far exceeding supply. Distributor allocations of single-vineyard cuvées, typically measured in pallets, are being doled out by “the layer” — 14 to 28 cases at a time — even as the world whines for more.

Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate poured fuel on Oregon’s vintage fire last month, making mention of the “vintage of a lifetime,” as Parker’s publication doled out a bevy of high-scoring reviews. Suffice it to say that if you’re looking for the highest-rated 2014s from the likes of our favorites — Soléna, Bergström, Patricia Green, Cristom, Beaux Frères, and WillaKenzie — and you’re not already on the winery mailing list, get in line. You’re out of luck.

Unless of course, you’re a WineAccess member, on a day like today.

The 2014 Patricia Green Pinot Noir Freedom Hill Vineyard Dijon Clone 115 is one of the richest, darkest, and most extravagant Oregon Pinot Noirs of the year. Brilliant ruby-purple to the rim. Explosive aromas of crushed black raspberry, black cherry, and sweet spice, framed by plenty of new-wood cedar. Deep, dark, and dense, the core features gobs of spicy black-raspberry preserves. Given the extreme ripeness of the harvest on Freedom Hill, Green opted for 50-60% whole-cluster fermentation, much explaining the wine’s briery and almost chewy texture that so perfectly braces and buttresses the opulence of the vintage. Finishes with terrific dusty-tannin freshness and sappy muscle. Drink now for its sheer hedonism or lay down until the mid-2020s.

93 points from Parker’s Wine Advocate. Total production of just 441 cases, 50 of which have been earmarked for WineAccess. Offered for $37/bottle — the sharpest delivered price in America — as if discounting means a damn thing when speaking of one of the top single-vineyard Pinot Noirs of Oregon’s “vintage of a lifetime.”