St. Innocent 2015 Pinot Noir, Temperance Hill Vyd., Willamette Valley

St. Innocent has achieved an exceptional reputation for producing high quality, single vineyard Oregon Pinot Noirs. This wine is from the renowned Temperance Hill Vineyard. Temperance Hill is their highest altitude vineyard and the highest vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills AVA and it's farmed organically. It is an honest, straightforward wine with aromas and flavors that are familiar. This vineyard was honored by Wine & Spirits Magazine as its Vineyard of the Year in 2014. Twice Burghound gave their Temperance Hill Vineyard Pinot noir the highest score of the vintage.

The 2015 vintage was about as close to perfection as it gets in Oregon. The de-stemmed grapes were fermented in small stainless steel fermenters with no SO2, allowing the fermentation to proceed naturally. After gentle pressing and settling, the wine aged in French oak barrels, 21% of which were new, for 16 months before bottling by gravity without fining.

Josh Reynolds in Vinous scored this 94 points saying "Deep lurid red. An expansive, impressively complex bouquet evokes ripe cherry, black raspberry, incense and potpourri, and smoky mineral and Asian spice nuances build with aeration. Silky, sweet and concentrated, yet lively as well, offering palate-staining red and dark berry, spicecake and floral pastille flavors that show outstanding clarity and back-end lift. Supple tannins frame the red-fruit-dominated finish, which hangs on with outstanding tenacity."

James Suckling scored this 95 points saying "A vibrant and incredibly spicy expression of pinot noir with a wealth of freshly picked blackcurrants, redcurrants, sour red cherries, orange rind and citrus. The palate doesn't hold back though and is dense and well-rounded yet retains the same freshness as the nose with driven acidity. Just how this wine manages to combine such concentration and vivacity is a mystery. Truly exceptional. So delicious now but better from 2020 and beyond."