2024 Benmar Pinot Noir Above the Clouds Willamette Valley 750 ml

Once he got the wine bug, Greg Bybee dropped everything to get a job at Rochioli—first just in the tasting room, just to get an “in,” then in the cellar with any winemaking work they’d let him do. Over five years, he had the chance to be involved in nearly every part of the process. It amounted to an advanced degree in high-end Pinot production.

In the years since, Greg has taken that knowledge and put it toward the goal of his own winery. Rather than stay in California, he looked north to Oregon’s Willamette Valley, which was still full of untapped potential. He named the place Benmar, for his children Bennett and Marecca, and built it alongside a second family, the Chopkos—the label images are the work of his wife, Jen.

Above the Clouds is Benmar’s valley-wide read on the Willamette. Rather than lean on a single site, Greg draws it from select hillside vineyards across Yamhill-Carlton and the Eola-Amity Hills, with smaller selections from the Chehalem Mountains and Dundee Hills. The fruit is organically farmed, and the blend leans on elevation—the name is a nod to the lift and airy grace that high sites lend a Pinot Noir.

He caught a good year to show it off, too. Across the Willamette Valley, 2024 is shaping up as an instant classic: a long, even growing season of warm days and cool nights let the fruit ripen slowly and hang late. The result is Pinot Noir with vivid fruit, bright acidity, and the kind of freshness and balance that rewards a spot in the cellar—exactly the sort of vintage growers hope for and collectors like to tuck away.

That gives you a wine built on tension. Bright red cherry sits alongside smoky pine and a streak of wet-rock minerality that seems to run right through the grippy, fine-grained tannins. This is a coiled, structured Pinot rather than a plush one—the kind that rewards a good decant, unwinding to reveal juicier dark-berry fruit and warm baking spice underneath. Twelve months in French oak, 30% of it new, frames all of it without ever getting in the way.

It’s a striking amount of quality for a winery only a few vintages in—soulful, expressive, and unmistakably made by someone who spent years learning exactly what he was after.