2015 Lange Winery Pinot Noir Reserve Willamette Valley 750 ml

Lange’s Best and Most Complex Barrels

Jesse Lange’s “Reserve” Pinot Noir blend is painstakingly culled from the very best barrels in his cellar. In Wine Spectator’s 95-point vintage, the task of selecting the best lots proved an incredible difficulty. Translation: the 2015 Lange Estate Pinot Noir Reserve is possibly Jesse’s best to date. Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate declared that 2015 included “some of the finest Pinots Oregon has ever produced,” and Lange’s is right in the pocket. Lange is no stranger to Wine Access clients. His luscious Pinot Noirs are a staple for most well-stocked cellars, and the 100 happy clients who rated the previous vintage 4- and 5-star ratings are already hitting “buy” on this current release. Explosively aromatic with ripe cherry, black raspberry, allspice, and boasting an endless finish, this mouthwatering Lange Reserve already lives up to the 2015 hype but will continue to age magnificently for another six years. Just $29.99 per bottle with shipping included on 6.

A few years back, we knocked our knuckles raw on the door of Lange Estate. We were hoping to score some face time with the young winemaker who had catapulted his family’s estate into Oregon’s top echelon by earning Winery of the Year honors from Wine & Spirits Magazine. Our persistence paid off: A wiry guy who looked like he could burn up the Boston Marathon course in 2:36 let us in. It was Jesse Lange, and he treated us to an unforgettable vertical tasting that left no mystery as to what the buzz was about.

These days, Jesse tends to call us up out of the blue on his own good time, but it’s always a chat we relish having. On this most recent call, Lange rattled off his interpretation of the vintage, with its heat spikes occasionally exceeding 100 degrees, early budbreak, and big fruit clusters. When we could get a word in, we picked his brain about the 2015 Lange Estate Willamette Valley “Reserve” Pinot Noir.

True to his understated, just-the-facts manner, Jesse didn’t employ the hyperbole we were hearing from everyone else, but the underlying message was clear enough: the wines were spectacular, already over-performing. He described his 75 individual lots from world-class Willamette sites like Lange Estate Dundee Hills, Freedom Hill, and Temperance Hill, as “a really nice cross-section of Willamette Valley.” Per usual, Lange—an obsessive farmer—called all the shots on when to pick, tracking each box of berries plucked off his vineyards to the very barrel in which they age.

In the cellar, “making the ‘Reserve’ is the most fun,” Jesse said. In contrast to his expressive single-vineyard wines, “I don’t have any self-imposed restrictions on what barrels or vineyards go into it—could be an old block or young block, as long as it shines.”

His carefully selected Pinot Noir grapes undergo daily punch-downs over two weeks, which enhances concentration, before Lange captures all the free-run juice and employs his “spice rack”—individually selected French oak barrels to complement each lot. The “Reserve” blend is then painstakingly culled from the very best barrels in the cellar.