2024 Patricia Green - Pinot Noir Reserve Willamette Valley (750ml)
Tasting Note: The 2024 Willamette Valley Reserve Pinot Noir is, as always, a great indicator of what to expect from Patricia Green Cellars’ wines from the vintage. In this vintage’s case it is even more than that. This wine has flavor intensity, texture, complexity, structure and length that are usually impossible to find in this combination in a Pinot Noir at this price point because wineries generally don’t have this much incredible old vine wine available to not only supplement their entry-level Pinot Noir, but be the actual backbone of it. This is red-fruited, highly perfumed Pinot Noir with the sort of high-level texture and length that are normally found in wines of double the price and more. This is utterly delicious now but will be a rare bottling at this level that would age easily for over a decade.
Why is the entry-level wine called Reserve: Patricia Green Cellars has been around long enough that when we began our winery in 2000 there was still concern that the AVA “Willamette Valley” was not particularly well known around the country. Yes, those were different times. So, this bottling was actually labeled as “Oregon” from 2000-2005. However, in 2002 we had 10 barrels from various vineyards that were very good, but not quite in line with what we were doing with the single vineyards the barrels came from, however we felt like they made a special wine above and beyond the Oregon bottling. We bottled them and called it “Reserve”. By 2006 it was clear that the Willamette Valley had made an indelible and lasting mark at a national and even international level and that it was time for us to ditch the Oregon moniker. However, the way our labels were set up back then we needed to have something in the stripe at the bottom of the label to identify the wine. To make this even more ponderous of a story, the issues in getting label approval back then were quite real as the ATF (at the time) did not have an online way to submit so approvals could take months. We decided to use the already approved “Reserve” label as we felt that this wine was more than some basic “Willamette Valley” bottling that had become a catchall for larger wineries cheapest Pinot Noir. And a decade and a half later it has all worked out. The wine is still an excellent quality Pinot Noir with vineyard sources that are quite astonishing given the wine’s place in our long lineup.
-Winery Notes