Houndstooth Pinot Noir Oregon 2017

Scott Brenner and Kelli White are well known here in Napa as folks who know a thing or two about great wine. Together, they built one of the best California-centric wine lists in the world at St. Helena’s Press restaurant, Kelli painstakingly created perhaps the greatest compendium of Napa winery history with her weighty “Napa Valley: Then And Now” book, and these fantastic sommeliers have tasted and studied remarkable wines the world over...so yeah, when they started their own label, we took notice.

Scott and Kelli specifically moved to Napa to learn winemaking. Their goal was to make age-worthy, elegant, and fun wines from select sites in California and Oregon. They kept their restaurant jobs because it was very expensive to grow a brand using their own money. Over a decade in, Houndstooth has mostly fallen under the scope of Scott, with Kelli mostly engaged in writing and teaching aspects of wine.

Houndstooth is their passion project, launched in 2011, focusing on small-lot wines sourced from select vineyards across Northern California and Oregon. This is their 2017 Oregon pinot noir...and it’s really, really good. Fruit is sourced from a well-known single vineyard in the Dundee Hills AVA -- from none other than Napa Valley legend turned Oregon champion, Tony Soter. The grapes were trucked down to Oakville during their pre-fermentation "cold soak" and finished here by Scott and Kelli. In fact, the wine is only labeled as "Oregon" because of new labeling restrictions that prevent vineyard and appellation designation on fruit processed out of the state of origin. But rest assured, this is some single-vineyard, finely-tuned Dundee Hills goodness! Simply a beautifully aromatic, softly textured wine that is seductively creamy on the palate. Aromas of dusty rose, hibiscus, and new leather get things started – closely followed by flavors of cranberry, pomegranate, bing cherry, milk chocolate, and cinnamon. Supremely well-balanced, with a long and spicy finish – this absolutely crushes most $25 pinot noirs out there. Get a few of these ‘cause they are just starting to really shine!