2022 Yesterday Pinot Noir Chehalem Mountains Willamette Valley 750 ml

We were tasting through the cellar with Laurent Montalieu, one of the most decorated winemakers in Oregon, when we came to a small cluster of barrels marked “CHMT+++ ??? :(”

We gleaned that it was from the Chehalem Mountains. What piqued our curiosity were the question marks.

We asked, and Laurent explained that he’d run into an issue: Those barrels of Pinot were absolutely thrilling, but due to NDAs that came along with the grapes, he couldn’t label them as single-vineyards. He didn’t have enough to distribute as a separate cuvée, and he couldn’t bear the thought of blending them away into a lower-tier bottling.

The wineries that own these two vineyards in the Chehalem Mountains craft vineyard-designate bottles that go for $80-$125 each from those sites. Both sites sit on veins of the coveted Jory soils that made Oregon Pinot so famous. That red clay, which gets its color from fractured, iron-rich basalt that sits below the topsoil, features in the most famous—and often the most expensive—land in the Willamette Valley. 

Laurent’s custom cuvées have fetched $200+ at the Willamette Valley Pinot Noir Auction, and the Yesterday Pinot he crafted lives up to the full potential of those sites. 

It’s beautifully expressive on the nose, with complex red fruit that sings with toasted cherries and ripe raspberries, complemented by floral undercurrents, a hint of vanilla bean, and baking spice from the perfectly judged 20% new French oak. On the palate, silky tannins frame layers of fruit, forest floor, and a hint of dried herbs. It’s top-class stuff that stands with anything coming out of the state—which is why we locked it down on the spot.