2019 Audeant Wines, Pinot Noir, Willamette Valley, Oregon.
The dark ruby hued 2019 Audeant Pinot Noir, an all new producer and wine for me, is an impressive wine that is bursting with personality and classic Oregon character with a low alcohol freshness, showing off vivid dark cherry, plum, raspberry and tart cranberry fruits, some spicy pop, earthy notes and subtle French oak, all working together in a smooth, medium bodied and elegant Pinot. There’s the sub 13% alcohol and lightness to admire, but as it opens this satiny textural Audeant Pinot Noir fills out on the palate and you get the sense of expansion and concentrating without weight, much like a Burgundy sometime does, making for a very elegant wine that I found kept my attention and excited the senses. Those that like the old school, less ripe and earthy Oregon Pinots will want to latch on to the 2019s, which proved difficult for winemakers and while results were uneven, there are some lovely efforts, like this one. Still very much under the radar, especially outside the region, Audeant looks set to blow up as their new releases get a wider audience.
Audeant Wines, a newer winery in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, was started by recruiting a young and talented winemaker Andrew Riechers, who’s relationships with farmers and vineyard owners throughout the valley helped get this label off the ground with some impressive results, as this Pinot shows. The winery explains that this small project was formed around a handful of rows, in a few of the most challenging and compelling vineyard sites in the Willamette Valley, where they sourced grapes from some older own rooted vines, un-irrigated and organically farmed at high elevation, believing that these vines, in the margins, are intense terroir driven sites that capture time and place. Oregon has so much diversity in style and terroir driven character these days, it is always a thrill of discovery tasting through the latest releases and vintages, with Audeant being a winery I will be following, in a new generation of Pinot makers that have impressed me with Vincent, Violin along with my favs like Hundred Suns to name a few. But classics, such as The Eyrie, Brick House, Cameron, Beaux Freres and St. Innocent still great ambassadors of the Willamette Valley, so it is exciting times here and a wonderful time to explore the region.
($60 Est.) 93 Points, grapelive