2018 Anderson Family Vineyard Pinot Noir Dundee Hills 750 ml

Ask Oregon winemakers their favorite insider-secret wineries, you'll hear the Anderson Family Vineyard name come up over and over.

Their terroir inspires envy even among the most privileged in the Willamette Valley: In the late 80s, Cliff and Allison Anderson found a steep hillside in the far northeastern Dundee Hills. With its slope, good drainage was a given. The ground was as rocky as they'd ever seen in the area—it would require a veritable chisel to plant grapevines in there.

Though the conventional wisdom at the time was that the site was too difficult to plant and work, the Andersons forged ahead. They put Pinot into the ground in 1992, and their reputation grew as the vines did.

Anderson never became a household name, and that's rather the point. The 16.5-acre site—planted to Pinot, Chardonnay, and a little Pinot Gris—stays small by design, and they've long sold much of their prized fruit to esteemed local producers like Bergström, Patricia Green, and JK Carriere, keeping only a modest share for their own hand-built bottlings.

Yet anyone lucky enough to get a pour won't forget the quality in the bottle. They spare no expense in production: Anderson Family moves every wine by gravity alone and ferments with native yeasts, the old-world way.

And they made the most of 2018, a warm, dry, generous vintage across the Willamette Valley. This bottle leans into the year's riper red fruit while holding onto the elegance the site is known for—exactly what made us fall in love with Oregon Pinot in the first place.

Eight years from harvest, this wine has come into its own. An incredible opportunity for Pinotphiles.