A Masterpiece: The Highest Rated Maresh Pinot Ever!

This Pinot Noir hadn't even been released and it was already the highest scoring vintage ever in not one but two international wine publications. This is not coincidence; this is evidence of a masterpiece in the making.

For us, the longest-time Arterberry Maresh believers who've tasted every Maresh Pinot ever made, the points—all 99 and 97 of them—tell only a fraction of the story. The '24 Maresh Pinot is a wine Jim Arterberry Maresh has been wild about since the fall of 2024. Now that we've tasted it, we know why.

Read the actual reviews as we did, nodding our heads the whole time, and know that "good luck keeping your hands off the '24" is the truth. Buy some for now for its sheer amazingness and/or buy some for the future. All of us are telling you the same thing: this wine is mind-blowing and needs to be in your collection.

Arterberry Maresh Maresh Vineyard Pinot Noir 2024

Arterberry Maresh Maresh Vineyard Pinot Noir 2024

99 points James Suckling:An intense, layered and intriguing wine that changes a lot in the glass. Pronounced umami, dark fruit, spices, pine forest, crushed flowers and orange peel up front. Concentrated and refined with energetic acidity and verve, leading to a long, evolving finish.

97 points Vinous: "Savory depths of cherry sauce, woodland herbs, cedar, spice box, crushed violets, and lifting nuances of split pine make the 2024 Maresh Vineyard Pinot Noir impossible to ignore. Dangerously seductive, this soothes the palate with ripe red and blue fruits over a tactile core of minerality as textures of pure silk envelop the senses. Lavender tones resonate over a framework of tannins as echoes of crushed blackberry and a hint of licorice slowly fade through the wonderfully long finale. There is so much complexity here, but also sheer drinkability. Good luck keeping your hands off the 2024 as it matures." 

Us: This magical Pinot Noir is on its own pedestal. Reading the early reviews (below) it's so easy to nod our heads: dangerously seductive, the definition of silky, the kind of wine where every time you reach for the glass, a new layer has emerged, complex but just so amazingly drinkable.

It's all here. It's mindblowing. It's a Maresh masterpiece.


 


Your Purchase

The Magical 2024s: Historic Balance, Everyday Value

With one wine, we thought it might be a fluke. A second wine brought a glimmer. Then the third, and fourth, and fifth...by now we were staring at the obvious, impossible-to-ignore truth.

We're on the cusp of a special—scratch that—remarkable vintage for Willamette Valley wine. That's the truth, evidenced by tasting the 2024 vintage of the five wines below. In each tasting note you'll read about remarkable, magical balance—each 2024 Pinot Noir below is the most beguilingly balanced vintage we have tasted. Oregon's most famous winemaker, Ken Wright, wrote that the '24s are the most naturally balanced wines he's experienced since the beginning of his career in 1978. So now we're talking historic.

Each of these 2024 Pinots is outstanding enough to have its own feature, and each will over the coming weeks. And we will continue tasting and bringing you more magically balanced '24s. That this remarkable handful comes to us between $15-$35 is almost unfair to the competition. Get ready for the magical 2024 Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs, starting today!


My perfect Pinot.

Hope Well Eola-Amity Hills Pinot Noir 2023

Flash back to mid-May: I tasted a Pinot and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since. The first tasting prompted the kind of reaction that makes me doubt myself–it made me ask, "was it really that good?" So I tasted it again. Then a third time. That's when I knew.

I had just come from the Willamette Valley Auction, where I tasted dozens of ultra-fancy 2023 Pinots from top wineries. This was better. I flashed-back to a heavy-hitter

Burgundy tasting in April, where the top wines were from Echezeaux and Richebourg. Those Grand Cru Burgs wished they were this good.

Hope Well 2023 is the best Pinot Noir I've tasted this year and I'm honestly not sure what will be able to beat it by year's end (as of early December, nothing has). If you've enjoyed my Pinot recommendations over the years, I urge you not to miss this.

It is perfect. So beautifully detailed with quiet intensity, it emanates brightness yet is achingly deep. It's not about flavors of this, that, and the others–it is about impact: supreme elegance yet haunting persistence, the kind that's kept my attention the entire year. 

Mimi Casteel's Hope Well Pinot harnesses the interconnectedness with which she approaches farming—which seems too simple a term for how she nurtures the land above and below ground, the plants and micro-organisms that thrive under her watch.

Mimi's also an excellent writer and I love her notes on my perfect Pinot: "2023 was a perfect year to see what tantalizing potential we have found in our new home, with graceful long autumn days that welcomed dry and beautiful picking conditions under no pressure to rush. The 2023 Hope Well Pinot Noir reveals the power of the Eola Hills with an outline of graceful restraint. The curve of the fruit is defined by the cut of her bright tone, a dizzying mélange of juxtapositions that unveil a complete and harmonious whole."


Your Purchase Option
Hope Well Eola-Amity Hills Pinot Noir 2023

Be adventurous!

Shake up your Oregon wine game! Step outside of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay to explore these thrilling new wines—two Albariños, a Mencia, and Sangiovese. If you listen closely, you can hear a buzzing...that's not bees, it's the excitement in the Portland market for Sacred Shore.

Sacred Shore's adventure began when two friends with a love of Galician grapes (see: two Albariños and a debut Mencia) looked to do something different. Exploration landed them a tiny but brilliant plot of Sangiovese. It could be novelty if not for the serious credentials and wine experience involved—winemaker Andrew Riechers learned in the cellars of Oregon's JK Carriere, New Zealand's Burn Cottage, Burgundy's Naudin Ferrand, then back to Oregon for 5 years as Antica Terra's assistant winemaker before co-founding the buzzy up-and-coming Audeant. He's joined by John Soares, expert palate and wineman-about-town.

We're proud to be two of the busiest bees urging you to take a page from Sacred Shore's book: be adventurous, and try all four of these delicious new wines!