2023 Duck Pond Cellars Pinot Noir Blanc Willamette Valley

12.5

This dry wine shines with brilliant clarity. Complex aromas of cherry blossom, honey, and marcona almonds meet a bouquet of sweet cream, vanilla bean, and fresh-baked scones. On the palate, flavors of pineberry, strawberry, white peach, and lemon zest are nestled in a balance of lively acidity and supple tannins, lingering on a delightful finish of fresh fruit and soft pastry with a subtle hint of minerality.

This Pinot Noir Blanc is made from Mariafeld clone fruit from Minert Ridge Vineyard, which is well-suited for white wine because of the clone’s large berry size and high natural acidity.

The fruit was lightly whole cluster pressed, settled, and racked to French oak barrels where it was fermented slowly to preserve its delicate aromatics before resting sur lie until blending to build richness and complexity. It was then blended to tank, heat stabilized with bentonite clay, cold stabilized, filtered, and bottled.

The 2023 vintage began with a cool, wet early spring, which delayed bud break until the end of April. After bud break, the weather quickly warmed, and the combination of favorable weather and good soil moisture supported rapid canopy growth in May and June. Despite one of the latest bud breaks on record, bloom took place almost a week ahead of average timing in early to mid-June, with vines at full trellis height. The weather during bloom was fair, leading to strong and even fruit set. Warm and temperate weather continued in June and July, and a brief heat spell in mid-August quickly gave way to more dry, moderate weather again until harvest began in mid-September. Brief rain showers towards the end of harvest extended the growing season for our later sites, and the maturity and integrity of the fruit across the board was excellent. The result was a vintage with fantastic balance and ethereal yet vivid flavors, embodying the tensions of a classic Willamette Valley growing season in which the weather seemed to deliver exactly what we needed just in time at every corner. The wines are at once serious and ageworthy and also precocious and easy to love in their youth–this vintage, which kept us guessing about what it might become all spring, is destined to be a classic.