2022 Norris Estate Riesling Ribbon Ridge 750 ml

Two acres. That's all the Riesling Robert McKinley planted when he put in the Norris McKinley Vineyard in 2007—two acres out of 12, on one of the most coveted stretches of ground in the Willamette Valley. It's a small bet, but it's placed on extraordinary real estate, and the 2022 Estate Riesling is the payoff.

The Ribbon Ridge AVA is just three-and-a-half miles long and less than two miles wide—the smallest appellation in Oregon—and yet it punches so far above its weight that its neighbors can only watch in envy. Beaux Frères, Brick House, Penner-Ash: the names clustered within this tiny elevated strip read like a who's who of Oregon's finest.

Nearly all of it is planted to Pinot Noir. That's the economic reality: Pinot commands the prices and attracts the attention. Riesling, for all its nobility, rarely gets this kind of address. When a producer does plant it here—in genuinely A-grade Ribbon Ridge soil—the results are worth paying attention to.

McKinley grew up on the western edge of the Chehalem Mountains, watching his family transform a hazelnut farm into a vineyard, with some of the state's most celebrated Pinot estates practically in his backyard. He went on to hone his craft at Williams Selyem in Sonoma, WillaKenzie in the Willamette Valley, and Torbreck in Australia's Barossa before returning to the land where he started.

Ribbon Ridge's soils are a mix of marine-origin sandstone and siltstone that promote drainage and require no irrigation, and the AVA's hillside topography creates a distinctive microclimate: sun on the slopes, fog in the valley below, clouds resting on the ridges above.

McKinley farms organically and works the vineyard with the same focus he brings to his Pinots. The 2022 Estate Riesling is the result: bright and precise, with the kind of lively acidity that makes Riesling grown in cool-climate appellations so compelling, and the stone fruit and citrus character that reflects both the grape and the site. Riesling planted in Ribbon Ridge doesn't happen often. When it does, it's worth the detour.