Grochau Cellars Pinot Noir Anderson Family Vineyard Dundee Hills Oregon 750ml.

"Translucent red. Displays highly perfumed, spice-accented red fruit preserve and floral pastille aromas that show excellent clarity. A zesty mineral nuance builds in the glass. Lively and sharply focused on the palate, offering raspberry and bitter cherry flavors that steadily deepen and become sweeter as the wine stretches out. In a decidedly graceful but ample style, finishing with sharp focus and silky, slowly mounting tannins that add framework and gentle grip." - Josh Raynolds Winemaking: The grapes were picked on September 20th, 2015. Once they arrived at the winery, we sorted the grapes and put them in the fermenter for a 5 day cold soak. Due to the warmth and ripeness of the vintage, 50% of the stems were included in the fermenter. The un- inoculated fermentation took 5 days to start, and once started it took 12 days to complete. We left the wine in the fermenter for another 10 days for maceration before we drained the wine out of the fermenter. We settled the wine for 24 hours before going to 25% new, 25% twice filled and 50% neutral French oak barrels, where the wine aged sur lie for 18 months before bottling. Vineyard: The Anderson Family Vineyard is located on the NE side of the Dundee Hills at around 300 feet elevation. The vineyard has a 3 different aspects but all of my blocks face east. To me, the Dundee Hills is all about red fruits, flowers and sweet spices; Anderson Family Vineyards typically produces a concentrated version of this with some darker fruit tones. We buy three different clones from this site: Dijon 667, Wadensvil and Pommard. Bottling: The wine was bottled on April 22nd, 2017. 100 cases were produced. ABOUT THE VINEYARD: Great drainage defines great wine. Burgundy’s Cote d’Or has Kimmeridgian limestone. Chateauneuf-du-Pape has rounded cobbles. Bordeaux’s finest wines are from gravel beds. Vines with dry feet make the world’s best wines. In the ‘80s’, Cliff and Allison Anderson searched years for the ideal site; a vineyard property where deeply rooted vines produce delicious wines. The quest ended at a steep massif of broken stones in the heart of Oregon’s Dundee Hills; an ancient landslide of broken basalt: Truly dry feet. In 1992, Oregon wine pioneer Jack Meyers helped chisel out our vineyard. Today, over two decades later, we organically farm vines on our steep, rocky slopes. Anderson Family crafts wine in small lots with native yeast - moved entirely by gravity. Each vintage ages slowly in our cool cave resulting in wines smacking of spice with layers of flavor. This vineyard has been our family’s mission since we found our 20-acres – an ancient pile of fractured basalt – in the Dundee Hills in 1989. And since, through years of clearing and planting, supply of superior wine grapes to several winery partners, and creation of our own hands-on small-batch bottlings, our goals have remained the same: plant on steep slopes, grow deep roots, deliver intense flavors. Grochau Cellars was founded in 2002 with the goal of producing wines true to their terroir with minimal intervention and manipulation of winemaking technique. Grochau Cellars is the project of John Grochau and his wife Kerri. After more than 13 years working as a sommelier in Portland, John made the leap into winemaking, first at Oregon pioneer Erath and then as Doug Tunnel’s assistant at the esteemed Brick House Wines for four years. With vineyard selection, Grochau seeks out vineyards dedicated to non-interventionist farming techniques (organic when feasible, sustainably focused, environmentally sensitive) and work closely with the growers so that their fruit sources can become the wines Grochau strives to make. In the cellar the philosophy is pretty simple. As John says “Don’t screw it up. Resist the urge to do too much.” Modern winemakers have such an array of options available to them it’s staggering. Micro-oxygenation. Wine concentrators. Enzyme addition. Not to mention the temptation so many indulge to beat an otherwise fine wine over the head with a battery of new oak. Grochau eschews all this. Minimal handling, native yeast fermentation, no enzyme additions, minimal use of new oak: these are the hallmarks of their wines. Honest, accurate, true to their roots and to the wonderful subtleties of vintage variation.