Professional Ratings
- 92 points – James Suckling: “Juicy, red-fruited, whole-cluster Pinot” with red cherry, dried herbs, spice, red apple, and pencil shavings.
- 91 points – Wine Enthusiast: Praised for blackberry, pain au chocolat, marionberry, café latte, and savory mushroom notes.
- 90 points – Jeb Dunnuck: Noted cedar, clove, baked cherry, forest earth, balanced acidity, and elegant structure.
Tasting Notes
Made using whole-cluster fermentation, this Pinot Noir displays aromas of dried cherry, cranberry, baking spice, and herbs. The palate combines bright red fruit with savory notes of mushroom, tea leaf, tobacco, and earth, supported by fresh acidity and fine tannins.
Overall Review
The 2023 Whole Cluster Pinot Noir is a vibrant, food-friendly Oregon Pinot that showcases the complexity and spice whole-cluster fermentation can bring. Critics praised its balance of fruit purity and savory depth, making it one of the strongest values in Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.
Years ago, Founder Jim Bernau began experimenting with Pinot Noir by gently dropping hand-picked whole clusters in a chilled stainless fermenter, pushing all the oxygen out with CO2 and sealing the vessel tight. What happened next was magical — the berries started to swell and turn pink. When they burst, they released the most aromatic, fermenting Pinot Noir.
This Pinot Noir shows rich colors of dark garnet and currant. Plentiful aromas of cherry cola, black tea and wild blueberry give ample depth and character to the wine. A pleasant array of fruit flavors and barrel notes includes marionberry, candied cherry and hints of cedar and sweet tobacco. The wine tickles the palate with lingering tannins and a generous round mouthfeel.
Food Pairing: Our most versatile Pinot Noir for food pairing, this wine lends itself well to sweet and tangy BBQ dishes, sushi, spicy Asian and Indian dishes, wood-fired flatbreads, gourmet burgers and salmon. Try serving slightly chilled on a warm summer evening.
Peak drinkability: 2022 - 2026
Founded in 1983 by Oregon native Jim Bernau with the dream of creating world-class Pinot Noir, Jim cleared away an old pioneer plum orchard in the Salem Hills and watered the vines by hand using 17 lengths of garden hose to get the grapelings through their first summer. Willamette Valley Vineyards has grown from a bold idea into one of the region’s leading wineries, earning the title “One of America’s Great Pinot Noir Producers” from Wine Enthusiast Magazine.
“Our mission in growing cool-climate varietals is to create elegant, classic Oregon wines from the Willamette Valley Appellation. As native Oregonians, we treasure our environment and use sustainable practices in growing and vinifying our wine grapes.” - Jim Bernau, Founder/CEO
The “budwood” of Willamette Valley Vineyards began long before its founding in 1983 by vintner Jim Bernau. His Dad, a Roseburg attorney, was hired by California winemaker Richard Sommer to secure one of the first winery licenses in Oregon since Prohibition. Jim’s Dad allowed small tastes of Richard's wine at the dinner table, lighting a path that led Jim from home winemaking to studies at UC Davis and eventually Beaune, France.
Jim's early “winemaking” grew more from mischief when at the age of 10, he liberated his Mom’s frozen Concord grape juice and followed the description of fermentation he found in the family’s set of encyclopedias!
In 1983, with the encouragement from winemakers making their move from California, Jim cleared an old pioneer plum orchard in the Salem Hills, hidden underneath scotch broom and blackberry vines to plant Pinot Noir. Unable to afford drip irrigation, he watered the vines by hand using 17 lengths of 75’ garden hose to get the grapelings through their first summer.
Willamette Valley Vineyards has collaboratively grown its estate vineyards through partnerships like the merger with Oregon wine pioneer, Bill Fuller of Tualatin Vineyards (established in 1973), the O'Briens for Elton Vineyard (established in 1983) and Loeza Vineyard (planted in 2015). The winery sources all of its barrel-aged Pinot Noir from its estate-grown vineyards and meticulously farms by hand nearly 500 acres in the valley.
Since the winery founding in 1983, stewardship of the land has been a key principle in our winemaking. We practice environmentally sustainable farming and were part of the founding of the Low Input Viticulture and Enology (LIVE) program.
Today
Jim’s vision of organizing wine enthusiasts to help build a world class winery in Oregon has, over time, resulted in the winery being named “One of America’s Great Pinot Noir Producers” by Wine Enthusiast. Among the winery’s unique distinctions is that it's owned by more than 20,000 wine enthusiasts (NASDAQ: WVVI & WVVIP).
harvesting grapes with clippers
Our approach is to grow, by hand, the highest quality fruit using careful canopy management and yield balance, to achieve wines that are truly expressive of the varietal and the place where they are grown. We ferment and barrel each vineyard lot separately and display the best of these in our single vineyard designate bottlings. Our stylistic emphasis is on pure varietal fruit characters, with attention to depth, richness of mouthfeel and balance. The wines are truly a collaborative effort of the entire vineyard and winemaking staff.
