2021 On Wine Hill 'Millerandage' 100% Pinot Noir (clone 943)
Having resisted being the 1,000 winery to make a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, I held out until there was a unique sourcing opportunity or compelling story to tell. I started working with clone 943 during the 2018 vintage and it took me a few vintages to make something that stood out. This is a Dijon clone like no other.
Hens & Chicks 🐓 🐥
Pinot Noir clone 943 often suffers from “millerandage” or “hens and chicks”. These small clustered grapes can look mutated. They have small berries, big berries, normal size berries and some of the berries can be seedless. The clusters are rarely “uniform”. While many growers look down on the clone as “not productive enough” a small band of growers are seeing the advantages from the resulting wines. Given its unique aromatic and flavor properties, my interest was immediately piqued. There is an aromatic signature to this clone that reminds me of Mondeuse or Teroldago. The fruit aromatics are dark red approaching blue and purple. During the fermentation process, the wine smells and tastes nothing like a “typical” pinot noir. It’s shocking to learn that this is considered a “Dijon” clone when this one bares no resemblance to any of the other Dijon clones. This is most certainly a style of Pinot Noir for those who like a deeper expression of Pinot Noir, but note that this wine has these deeper attributes naturally, they are not derived from new oak barrels, vacuum concentration, or over extraction. This pinot noir was aged in neutral French oak barrels for 10 months and bottled unfined (vegan) and unfiltered.
