2015 Rex Hill Vineyard Willamette Valley Pinot Noir 750 ml

Parker’s “Under the Radar” Head Spinner

Black and white with rose gold outlines, the sight of a bottle of Rex Hill’s regal Willamette Pinot Noir is enough to turn heads. But one taste and you’ll understand why Rex Hill was given the 2017 Extraordinary Winery “Under the Radar” Award by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate. In the pantheon of Oregon Pinot Noir, Rex Hill deserves an entire row in your cellar. The state’s greatest winemaker, Lynn Penner-Ash, worked her first job there. Today, winemaking is led by a team of three, including Sam Tannahill who worked alongside Ted Littorai at Littorai. This 2015 Rex Hill Pinot Noir offers a picture-perfect snapshot of the brilliant Oregon vintage. A cuvée of Willamette’s highly prized and carefully selected Pinot Noir from its six sub-AVAs yields a mouthwatering ripe red cherry and wild berry-infused showpiece. $35 at the winery. Just $29.99 for our under-$30 steal of the vintage and a shot at being the first among your friends to pour Parker’s “Under the Radar” stunner.

Rex Hill — “one of Oregon’s most venerable wineries” says Wine Spectator — was founded by Paul Hart and Jan Jacobsen in 1982, when the Willamette Valley was just beginning to be take off as a promising wine-growing region. Over the years, the winery grew in renown, offering Lynn Penner-Ash — among Oregon’s greatest winemakers — her first job. She would stay for 18 years.

In 2006, when Hart and Jacobsen decided to retire, they sold the business to A to Z Wineworks, handing the reins over to a crackerjack winemaking team including Cheryl Francis, Michael Davies, and Sam Tannahill (who worked alongside Ted Littorai at Littorai).

Under their stewardship, Rex Hill has embraced biodynamic dry-farming and drastically cut production and yields, focusing on just a handful of handcrafted Burgundian wines. Thanks to their efforts, Rex Hill won the inaugural Wine Advocate Extraordinary Winery ‘Under the Radar’ Award in 2017, recognized as being “poised to become the next-great-thing” in the U.S.

In 2015 they went all in. It was a year produced a bevy of great wines. James Suckling left little room for doubt in his 2015 vintage report, entitled: “Oregon: Pinot Still King.” Comparing the year to its also excellent predecessor, Suckling call the 2015s “exceptional” and “fabulous,” noting that he and his team rated 90 percent of the Pinots they tasted over 90 points. Critics across the board were singing a similar tune: Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate wrote that the vintage included “some of the finest Pinots Oregon has ever produced.”

The 2015 Rex Hill Pinot Noir is drawn from sustainably grown blocks in each sub-AVA of the Willamette Valley, from the Chehalem Mountains to the Eola-Amity Hills, and include some of the oldest vineyards in the state. After an early harvest beginning on September 6th, Rex Hill released a stunning snapshot of the vintage — yours for a short time today.

Jonathan Cristaldi

Editor-in-Chief, Wine Access