Belle Pente Pinot Noir Estate Reserve 06
winery: Belle Pente
Belle Pente Pinot Noir Estate Reserve 06 - Tanzer 90 points Deep red. Smoky red berries and cherry on the nose, with a subtle note of musky underbrush. Tightly wound black raspberry and bitter cherry flavors become fleshier with air and pick up a candied rose quality and dusty tannins. The cherry and herb notes repeat on the long, sappy finish."
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Previous Vintage Tasting Notes
2005 Vintage Tasting Notes
The Belle Pente Estate Reserve Pinot noir 05 expresses the essence of Pinot noir, hiehgtened by a sense of place. Here's the heart and soul of the Pinot noir grape, and it is spendid. The sense of place, the "terroir" of the vineyard site, interweaves with the Pinot noir fruit flavors, adding a quality unique to the Belle Pente estate vineyard.
The 2005 Belle Pente Reserve is dark - dark in color, in aroma and in flavors, and dark in the sense it imparts of earth, forest, and ripe tannins.
Blackberry and black currant intermingle with spicebox and forest floor in the nose. An initial sense of sweet black fruit gives way to a rapid-fire sense of cassis, blackberry, blue plum, forest and field, restrained spice, and stone. If you've visited the winery, you'll recognize a hint of the scent of the grassy fields and Oregon oak and fir forest that surround the vineyard.
A prolonged finish of blackberry, cassis, blue plum, fresh turned earth, and silky yet intense tannins completes the wine. While intense, the tannins are silky, firm, and ripe. Balanced for cellaring for 4-8 years, the Belle Pente 05 Reserve is highly recommended by Avalon Wine. Very limited, less than 300 cases were produced.
The Belle Pente Estate Reserve Pinot noir ranks with the wines of John Thomas's "Thomas" Pinot noir and Russ Raney's "Cuvee J" in cult status. These are the insider wines for the real Oregon wine insiders.
Brian O'Donnell quietly pursues his winemaking craft on a hillside near Carlton, Oregon with a stunning view. Brian's Estate Reserve Pinot noir shows his vineyard's terroir and his ability to grow healthy grapes and allow them to evolve into the best possible wine. The Estate Reserve is very very limited.
From the winemaker: "Since it's first release in 1997, the Estate Reserve has been our flagship wine, representing "the best of the best" of Pinot Noir from our property each year. For the past several years, the same 2 of our 8 "blocks" of Pinot Noir vines have formed the backbone of this cuvée. The first is our initial planting from 1994, which is always the most complex wine in the cellar, and seems to gain additional levels of flavors and suppler texture every year. The second is the steeply sloping southwest section that consistently achieves the most even and thorough ripening in the entire vineyard, and contributes an intriguing spiciness to the wines that we don't get elsewhere. Throughout the year, we give these sections of the vineyard special attention, and reserve the optimal harvest days for picking these grapes. We then select the individual barrels from these blocks that display the best characteristics of our site: deep, dark, black fruit flavors and aromas, solid structure with firm ripe tannins, and good acid/tannin balance. T his 2005 version displays not only the best of our vineyard, but also the best characteristics of the vintage. It is complex, structured, and balanced with an underlying sappiness. Very nice today with the right food pairing, and filled with promise for even more enjoyment in the future!"
Previous Vintage Tasting Notes
