2021 Dunn Forest Pinot Noir

2021 DUNN FOREST PINOT NOIR

Tasting Notes:
This old vine pinot noir comes from our estate Dunn Forest Vineyard, planted in 1983 and 1991.  Notes of cherry, boysenberry and spice lead into chewy tannins and a warm lingering finish with hints of cedar. This wine should cellar well over the next 7-10 years. As always, an excellent food companion, we recommend lamb shanks with white beans or for a weeknight meal, ribeye on the grill.

Winemaking Notes:
The fruit was gently de-stemmed by a Euro Select into 1.5-ton fermenters leaving a remarkably high whole berry content. A two-day cold soak preceded inoculation done with a variety of yeasts designed to increase complexity and mouth-feel.  Fermentations were punched down in the morning and pumped over in the evening for 12-14 days with temperatures peaking around 84°F.  The wine was racked via gravity to settling tanks keeping each lot separate and was allowed to settle for two days before being racked to French oak barrels. The skins were shoveled into the press and pressed off to their own settling tank before racking.  Keeping the free run and press wines separate gives us more flexibility come summer when we start blending.  The wines were inoculated for malo-lactic and allowed to age for twenty two months.  The six selected barrels were racked from barrel, blended in tank and bottled in September 2023.

Harvest Notes:

The warm dry winter of 2021 led to an early bud break in some varietals while others were delayed by the cooler spring that followed.  When summer finally got underway the warm and dry weather produced beautiful, clean fruit.  The heat dome that hit us at the end of June had us on tenterhooks briefly but soon the weather reverted into a more traditional Oregon summer and those fears were allayed.  Late September and early October were perfect, cool and dry, allowing us to choose picking dates based on the state of the fruit, not the weather.  We are excited about the balanced fruit that came in as a result and look forward to sharing our wines with you.

Our estate vineyard, Dunn Forest, is LIVE Certified Sustainable and Salmon Safe. The vineyard is hand cultivated allowing us to respond to individual vine needs.