The 2000 Siduri Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is a rarity-both big and balanced. It is a blend of fruit from four different Oregon vineyards-Archery Summit, Muirfield, Shaw and Arbre Vert. The wine is also a combination of clones including Dijon clones 113, 114, 115, 667, and 777 as well as the Pommard and Wadenswil clones. Remarkably, this wine represents the third successive outstanding Oregon vintage.
With this variation in vineyard site and clones there were obviously differences in picking times, ripeness levels, and winemaking. Without getting too longwinded, we'll summarize some of the variations that make up the Willamette Valley Pinot Noir. We harvested some of the grapes as early as September 28th with most of the fruit hanging until October 6th. Most of the fruit was completely destemmed although we did choose to use a very small amount of whole clusters from one vineyard. All of the juice was cold-soaked and then fermented using indigenous, Assmanhausen, Barolo, and L2056 yeasts. Although we wanted to extract as much flavor from the grapes as possible we wanted to be careful not to raise the tannin level thus we punched down vigorously during the cold soak period but backed off quite a bit during the fermentation process. We carefully kept the press fractions separate and placed the wine in approximately 55% new French oak primarily from the Rousseau cooperage house. We then carefully selected the barrels for the blend and bottled them unfined and unfiltered.
The 2000 Siduri Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is a serious wine. It is a dark, complex wine with berries, hints of coal, earth, and underbrush. With some aeration, even more dark fruit characteristics emerge. All of this is balanced out by good levels of natural acidity and a good tannic backbone. Better balanced than the 1999 Willamette this wine is drinkable now but will definitely benefit from some age.
PRODUCTION: 317 cases
RELEASE DATE: November, 2001
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