The Eyrie Vineyards Pinot Gris Dundee Hills 2021

The Eyrie Vineyards is an icon of Pacific Northwest viticulture and a benchmark of American wine production in general. In 1965, fresh out of the acclaimed viticulture and enology program at University of California, Davis, David Lett and wife Diana moved to Oregon’s Willamette Valley to plant 3,000 vine cuttings in a nursery parcel they rented. It would be the first planting of pinot noir and chardonnay in the region, and the first known first pinot gris in the United States. The Eyrie Vineyards label was officially established a year later, when the couple planted vineyards in the Red Hills of Dundee, Oregon (just southwest of Portland) and constructed a winery in nearby McMinnville. From the winery’s inception, all wines have been estate grown and produced, non-irrigated, own-rooted and grown without the use of insecticides, herbicides or systemic fungicides, and since then, has become certified organic. These days, the Lett’s son Jason has taken the helm of production, applying the same care as his parents and extending the less-is-more philosophy to the cellar, ensuring minimal racking, extended lees contact, and complete and spontaneous native fermentations, never fining and rarely filtrating. For this, the estate’s flagship pinot gris, the grapes are destemmed and undergo a four-hour cycle in a basket press before fermenting on indigenous yeasts in steel tanks and being aged in neutral oak. Robust and unendingly satisfying, this is a pillow-soft and floral expression that boasts a broad, mineral-laden palate of honeyed Comice pear, lemon blossom, ripe white peach and fennel framed by rounded acidity. Certified organic, low intervention/natural wine.