Bethel Heights ‘Estate’ Pinot Noir 2021 – 750ml XXI

93pts Wine Spectator

Sleek and handsomely structured, with expressive raspberry and red plum flavors laced with black tea, forest floor and hints of mineral, building tension toward medium-grained tannins.

93pts James Suckling

Aromas of redcurrants and cherry drops with citrus rind, lilac and crushed stones. Medium-bodied, fresh and crunchy, with chalky tannins and vivid acidity. Bright, blue-fruited finish. A little chewy at the end. Drink or hold.

92pts Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate

Matured in 25% new oak, the 2021 Pinot Noir Estate has a medium ruby-purple color and scents of blueberries, cranberries, woodsmoke, pipe tobacco and burnt orange peel. The light-bodied palate is austere with mineral-driven fruit, bright acidity, chalky tannins and a slight bitterness on the finish. There’s a rusticity to this wine that’s unusual for Bethel Heights. Rating: 92?

Winemaker Notes

The Pinot Noir Estate is always the best place to start when evaluating our success or shortcoming in any given vintage. It incorporates nearly all our estate vineyard in various amounts, and as such provides an honest evaluation of the year. The 2021 Estate Pinot Noir reflects the multifaceted nature of the vintage: the abundance of fruit from our early picks under sunny skies and the earthen complexity we found from our older vines picked in cooler October weather. Blending the Estate is often our most difficult task because it is our largest bottling each vintage, and thus includes both our successes and shortcomings. Thanks to diligent farming from our vineyard team, attention to detail, and a fantastic winemaking team for harvest, the 2021 Estate Pinot Noir contains only successes.

Vintage Notes

Throughout the Willamette Valley, 2021 is considered an outstanding vintage. It was generous in terms of yields, ripeness, and quality and health of the fruit. Overall, the growing season was earlier than average. Harvest started on Sept 14 and finished on October 12. There were a couple of extreme heat events early in the summer that were devastating to some crops in the Valley, but in the vineyards the timing was just right to scour the powdery mildew out of the vineyard without harming the fruit, which had not yet begun to soften. August was also very hot, but temperatures cooled significantly in September, and rain showers in September and early October allowed us to take advantage of an extended ripening period for enhanced flavor development.

Vineyard Notes

This wine blends fruit from all the different sections of our Bethel Heights, Justice, and Lewman estate vineyards. It truly encompasses the entire breadth of expression at our estate, from the youthful exuberance of our youngest vines planted in 2002 to the brooding, earthy complexity of our old ownrooted vines that have been knitting themselves into our landscape for forty years.

Bethel Heights Vineyard and Justice Vineyard achieved Organic certification in 2021, Hope Well Vineyard in 2015. Beyond organic, all three estate vineyards are committed to continual reduction of off-farm inputs and continual reduction of energy and water consumption. We maintain a permanent green cover in the vine rows to build healthy soils, to sequester carbon, to mitigate erosion, to retain moisture, and to promote maximum biodiversity.

Organic