2021 Fir Crest Pinot Noir Estate Vineyard Yamhill-Carlton 750 ml

So what makes Fir Crest special? Don’t start by looking at the dirt, start by looking at the leaves on the vines.

Because those vines? They don’t look like the lush, green hedgerows you see in lifestyle photography. They look healthy—the vineyard is farmed organically and the leaves are dark green, the fruit impeccably free of disease, leaves pulled in the right places—but the canopy is sparse. You can look right through it in places. It looks, in short, like the vineyards you see in hallowed European sites, where vines are stressed, and produce thick skinned, concentrated grapes as a result.

Our friend Marcus Goodfellow—one of Oregon’s great winemakers—compared it to Burgundy’s Clos de la Roche Grand Cru. He’s long made a Fir Crest Vineyard Pinot, and other top producers like Walter Scott Wines and 100-point star Keith Emerson have all worked with grapes from Fir Crest. They all treasure the combination of rich fruit with electric vibrancy, concentration and beautiful aromatics for a site personality that powers out of the glass.

Planted in the far southwestern corner of the Yamhill-Carlton AVA—one of Oregon’s most prestigious, and home to names like Shea and Soter—it has the same marine sedimentary soils that are coveted in those sites. But the soils here are shallower before you hit bedrock, and the vineyard is cooler as well, whipped by winds coming from the Pacific Ocean.

The result is not only vines that have to put their energy into their grapes, but long hang-times for ripening. That translates to wines that hold onto a brilliantly vibrant acidity even as their flavors grow rich and seductive, making for wines that are dynamite at the table. We’ve been thrilled to get an allocation and know it’s going to be a giant hit.

The ‘21 represents the very first vintage for the Fir Crest Estate label, and it shows off the work of owners Robert and Karin Moshier, who have absolutely revitalized the site since buying it in 2020. There’s no way this wine should be this price, except that their label is young and they need to reach a wider audience.