Patricia Green Cellars Reserve Pinot Noir 2023

“2023 is the best vintage in Patricia Green Cellars’ history.” That’s the winery talking. When we hear something like that we immediately want to argue the point but…we simply can’t and won’t, not after tasting their 2023 Reserve Pinot Noir. Call it a debate-ender, call it proof. Make up your own name if you want, but just call it the best Patricia Green Reserve. And wow, based on the incredible quality in the modestly-priced Reserve, we cannot wait to taste the rest of the PGC 2023s!

From the winery: 2023 is the best vintage in Patricia Green Cellar’s history. That’s up for debate, but certainly along with 2016 and 2005 it is in a very exclusive tier of truly great vintages. Winemaking conditions were nearly ideal and the winery itself often smelled more like a bakery making fruit muffins than it did a place fermenting grapes into wine! This was a vintage that seemed to exist in the romantic ideal of vintages rather than in the “reality of farming” nature of actual vintages.

The 2023 Willamette Valley Reserve Pinot Noir is, as always, a great indicator of what to expect from Patricia Green Cellars’ wines from the vintage. A very intense wine all the way around. The color is dark ruby and has a particular gleam to it that makes it seem like it shines. It is a darker, deeper and denser version. Pomegranate, Chinese Five Spice, cassis and a sweet earthen quality form the complex aromatics. The palate responds equally with dense, sweet blackberries, licorice, red plums and red spices that are well-integrated and float on a finish of well-defined tannins. In short, this wine is absurdly delicious to be an entry level Pinot Noir.

The winery has always been dedicated to the concept of the highest level quality without necessarily attaching a corresponding price point. Patty and I always wanted to have a winery that made wines that we liked to drink, but more importantly a winery that had wines we would, were we the customer, feel good about paying for. The Reserve Pinot Noir is as important a bottling to us as the lowest production, super-fancy and exclusive wine that we make. Lots of people see, buy and drink the Reserve and that is something that we love.

Why is the entry-level wine called Reserve: Patricia Green Cellars has been around long enough that when we began our winery in 2000 there was still concern that the AVA “Willamette Valley” was not particularly well known around the country. Yes, those were different times. So, this bottling was actually labeled as “Oregon” from 2000- 2005. However, in 2002 we had 10 barrels from various vineyards that were very good, but not quite in line with what we were doing with the single vineyards the barrels came from, however we felt like they made a special wine above and beyond the Oregon bottling. We bottled them and called it “Reserve”. By 2006 it was clear that the Willamette Valley had made an indelible and lasting mark at a national and even international level and that it was time for us to ditch the Oregon moniker. However, the way our labels were set up back then we needed to have something in the stripe at the bottom of the label to identify the wine. To make this even more ponderous of a story, the issues in getting label approval back then were quite real as the ATF (at the time) did not have an online way to submit so approvals could take months. We decided to use the already approved “Reserve” label as we felt that this wine was more than some basic “Willamette Valley” bottling that had become a catchall for larger wineries cheapest Pinot Noir. And a decade and a half later it has all worked out. The wine is still an excellent quality Pinot Noir with vineyard sources that are quite astonishing given the wine’s place in our long lineup.