White Cloud Pinot Noir

“The 2021 Pinot Noir White Cloud Vineyard blossoms with a pretty blend of wild berries, cooling smoke and cedar shavings. It's softly textured with racy dark red fruits and slowly saturating saline mineral tones. It finishes long and staining yet only lightly structured, leaving a pleasantly bitter tinge as the mouth waters for more.”~Eric Guido, Vinous, January 2024 Drinking Window: 2024 - 2030

WINEMAKER’S NOTES: All of the fruit was sourced from a neighboring site named White Cloud Vineyard, a completely new vineyard for EIEIO from a pioneering family I have known since 1994. Comprised of innumerable and unnamed Pinot noir cuttings and a few radical white grape cuttings not known to be planted in Oregon, let alone anywhere in North America. Additionally, the vineyard is planted to the Roman or more accurately Greek method of trellising or pruning to form a tree, extremely high hand labor and also low yielding, this is what they did before horses or tractors. Super old school.

Harvested mid-vintage by volunteers and delivered by tractor from the White Cloud wine patch to EIEIO’s processing plant (aka “winery”) by the owner + farmer, Joey Myers. Completely de-stemmed, with the exception of some of the “unique” varieties where the grapes were too big to flow through the de-stemmer. Yes, that is correct. Some of these “unique” grapes were as big as ping pong balls, so we hand carried them from the sorting line to the fermentation vessel. No SO2, no purchased yeasts, no added enzymes, this is wine grown AND made with in the old school methodology.

Only twenty percent new French oak with the balance being held, undisturbed for fourteen months in neutral French oak barrels.

WHY:
With so many sites being planted to exacting standards of blocks of the same cuttings within specific boundaries, why not do something against the grain to see what a “field blend” might produce.

Color is deep and rich. Aromas offer up Luden Brothers cough drops, black licorice, petrichor, ripe plums, and nectarines! Juicy on the entry showing great bright acidity. Entry is uniform and linear; initially you have beautiful, mouth coating flavors ranging from candied cherries to dark, almost astringent, unsweetened chocolate and within ten seconds a wave of dark chocolate dipped caramelize orange slices with sliced red plums arrives. Wait another ten and the finish is already starting showing roasted black plum tart with burnt sugar-coated crust. In the background are Morel mushrooms over a perfect châteaubriand au jus. Give it another thirty seconds and cinnamon red hots, raspberry sorbet and dusty black cherries abound.