Lazy River Vineyard Pinot Noir Yamhill-Carlton 2018

The Lazy River Vineyard is a long-time staple of famous Oregon producers like Ponzi, Lingua Franca, Panther Creek, Lavinea, and more! Their single vineyard bottlings often hit the market at two to three times this price. This is from the folks who own the vineyard – keeping back some of the best plots to make a small lot of their own...and boy, does it deliver!

Seriously, under $30 for an Oregon pinot noir, from one of the most heralded vineyards in Willamette Valley’s Yamhill Carlton region, made by none other than Burgundy grape savant Isabelle Meunier (Evening Lands, Felton Road, Domaine de la Vougeraie, and her own winery, Lavinea) – all in the 2018 vintage that is being heralded for spectacular richness, structure, and generously concentrated fruit...this is an off-the-radar deal of a wine! Better still, the price drops to a mere $24.95 when you get six! And free shipping? That’s a straight-up $149.70 signed, sealed, and delivered to your front door!

This complex and supple pinot noir is aptly described by co-founder Kirsten Lumpkin as “a New World echo of Burgundy.” Elegant and structured aromas and flavors of black cherries, raspberry linzer tortes, tart Bing cherries, and hard cherry candies, with reinforcing elements of black pepper spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, roasted sage, and earthy pine forest duff, this wine possesses a simple purity, and unadorned, timeless beauty. This stands impressively tall as a focused expression of a singular place – the ultimate goal of terroir.

The wine is crafted by Isabelle at the Carlton Winemaker’s studio – a joint project between Kirsten and Ned Lumpkin, along with local winemaker Eric Hamacher and his wife, Luisa Ponzi. The vision was a state-of-the-art, environmentally sustainable space where small-production, gravity-flow wines could be created and shared, with a retinue of winemakers to sample taste, and expound their wines, philosophies, and practices with like-minded souls. Think of it as the winemaker version of the Algonquin Round Table, or if you prefer, the Les Deux Magots Café in Paris’ Latin Quarter, where intellectual elites of Post-World War II (Hemingway, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Camus, and others) would meet to argue, reason, and one day change the world. Soter, Failla, Lavinea, Penner-Ash, and Project M are just some of the notable alums, with a new generation of Willamette’s rising stars incubating.

This is a wine that you’ll likely never find if you aren’t seeking it out – which in this case, is a great thing! An amazing price, for an up-and-coming wine brand, with fantastic pedigree – this is everything you could hope for in an Oregon pinot noir! While it lasts, at least!