2022 Silvan Ridge Winery Pinot Noir Willamette Valley 750 ml

The story starts in the early 1970s, when Doyle Hinman, a Eugene weatherman and schoolteacher convinced the southern Willamette Valley could grow great wine grapes, planted his first vines in the hills outside town. He was right, and those plantings are now among the oldest Pinot Noir vines in Oregon.

In 1979, Hinman opened Eugene's first bonded winery, helping put the southern end of the valley on the map alongside eventual neighbors like King Estate. Nearly five decades on, the estate is still one of the oldest and most established names in a region far better known for its northern reaches.

The fruit for this Pinot comes from small vineyards in that same stretch of country southwest of Eugene. It's a slightly different expression of Willamette Valley Pinot than the Dundee-centric north tends to produce, shaped by the cooler, southern end of the valley.

The winemaking is refreshingly hands-off. The wine spends nine months in French oak, only a fifth of it new, so the site and the fruit lead rather than the barrel. The result is a Pinot built around freshness and balance rather than weight or heavy toast.

The 2022 growing season was an Oregon classic. It began with near-disaster: a freak, late frost hit vineyards across the northern Willamette Valley, forcing vines to push new shoots and setting the season back by weeks.

A warm summer and a flawless fall put the year back on course. Fruit hung well into a long, dry October, an old-school harvest date reached with the benefit of modern viticultural knowledge, and the wines show exceptional vibrancy and captivating aromatics as a result.

This is a Pinot that leans into the region's classic strengths: bright red fruit, savory complexity, and the kind of lively acidity that makes Willamette Valley Pinot such a natural at the table.