Blood orange, amaro cherries, and violets folded
into imperious tannins and finely-tuned acids.
Dense and age-worthy.
Notes from the winemaker:
2017 was a bit of a bumper crop year and we had almost ten more barrels to work with than we normally do. We identified several exceptional barrels and played with a couple of blending options to see if we could pull out a barrel that stood apart as the representation of what we felt was an exemplary Pinot Noir. In doing this two barrels stood out, both as particularly true to their blocks (North and Guam), and as completely remarkable, excellent wines. So, we tried how they tasted together and we liked the wine so much that we made one barrel with both of these blocks. Meant to be highly exclusive and incredibly specific, The Barrel is meant to set a bar. Vintage to vintage we hope to be able to offer up a wine along the same philosophical lines, to demonstrate what we consider to be the best we have to show from that year. There will never be more than 25 cases of The Barrel.
All of the grapes used in our wines come from USDA/Oregon Certified Organic vineyards. Dai Crisp grows most of these himself and has been farming vineyards organically for 34 years, 25 of those at Temperance Hill. This philosophy of using a natural approach with minimal intervention also predominantly influences our winemaker, Boone McCoy-Crisp.
Learn more about Temperance Hill and the other Lumos Vineyards a little further down our home page.