“This wine’s inviting cherry pie aromas come with chicory, burnt sugar and smoke overtones. The tannins are drying, but the flavor and power are greater than the price tag would suggest.”
– 89 points & EDITORS’ CHOICE – Wine Enthusiast (year 2015)
TEST WINNER ✓✓✓✓✓ – Politiken’s wine test (2015)
EDITORS’ CHOICE – Wine Enthusiast (2015)
90 Points – James Suckling (2016)
90 Points – Robert Parker (2016)
“Everywhere there is a wine producer with a palate, there will be trials with Pinot Noir”. This is how the Oxford Wine Encyclopedia itself concludes its section on Pinot Noir. When the world’s wine enthusiasts with Christmas lights in their eyes describe their love for the Pinot Noir grape, French Burgundy is usually the subject of the warmest feelings. However, prices here have skyrocketed, so many enthusiasts are chasing the “holy grail” elsewhere. There is thus a lot of attention about where else in the world you can grow Pinot Noir and achieve the same quality as in Burgundy. Among the world’s enthusiasts, there is currently quite broad agreement that the American state of Oregon with the Willamette Valley subzone grabs second place. And it is classy, as the competition is great! The quality is towering and prices have generally become quite high for wine from Oregon. This one is a very beautiful exception – and without compromising on quality!
Elk Cove is the producer behind it and they are one of Oregon’s oldest and best producers. For this reason, they are offered grapes from many good fields, which the grape growers themselves cannot refine into wine. This wine is made from grapes from these good fields.
Elk Cove has managed to make a real, full-blooded Willamette Pinot Noir for us of towering quality, authentic in character and with “expensive” nuances of aging in oak barrels mixed with crisp, airy Pinot cherries. A wine that shouldn’t be possible at this price.
Oregon, with its cool, Burgundian climate, is probably the best place in the New World to grow the Pinot Noir grape. Pike Road Pinot Noir is composed of grapes from Pike Road’s own fields supplemented by some other winegrowers’ fruit, all hand-picked, hand-sorted and 100% Willamette Valley, the largest “AVA” (American Viticultural Area) in Oregon. The wine ferments in stainless steel tanks and is then aged for 10 months in 100% French oak barrels. The result is a light and mouthwatering wine, perfect for the lunch table!
Colour: Light ruby red.
Smell: Inviting scent of red cherries, violets and leather.
Tasting notes: A touch of well-integrated oak barrels mingles with raspberries, cranberries and hibiscus with mouth-watering acidity.
Serving suggestion: Serve slightly chilled. Perfect for the lunch table!
Pike Road Wines sent their first bottles to the market in 2016. Behind the enterprise we find the Campbell family, who planted their first fields in 1974 and at the same time started the now well-known winery, Elk Cove.
The idea behind Pike Road Wines is to sell high quality wine made from grapes grown exclusively in the Willamette Valley, but at prices that are more accessible than what you normally see in the area. The new initiative was named after the road that snakes through the lush valley and continues deep into the Oregon Coast Range – the mountains that are so important to the Willamette Valley’s favorable growing conditions.
At Pike Road, you have no reservations about buying grapes from other winegrowers, as long as the quality is top notch. On the contrary, they want to do their part to ensure that the small farmers and family businesses around the Willamette Valley can survive, and in many cases the Campbell family has had decades of working with these farmers! Therefore, several of the wines are made from both Pike Road’s own grapes and lots from selected farmers in the area. They also emphasize that this “multi-vineyard” method can in some cases produce a more complex wine.
