2023 BRITTAN VINEYARDS PINOT NOIR ESTATE MCMINNVILLE

Winemaker Robert Brittan, a wine industry veteran with the experience of over 45 harvests, has always had a passion for Pinot noir; a love affair that began in the 1980’s when he made several vintages under his Britt Hill label with fruit from Carneros. In 2004, Robert decided to leave Stags’ Leap Winery in Napa and start a Pinot noir project in the cool climate of the northern Willamette Valley.

The Brittan Estate Vineyard lies just 12 miles southwest of McMinnville, tucked into the foothills of the Coast Range. The original 18 acres were planted in 2001, but due to the challenging nature of this site and limited topsoil, only eight acres survived. Since 2004 when Robert and Ellen purchased the vineyard, it has been an ongoing rehabilitation project: replanting, retraining, and learning the unique landscape that has become Brittan Vineyard.

Following an unusually cold spring, the 2023 vintage was warm and dry, with low disease pressure across the vineyard. The warm start to summer gave us the shortest interval between bud break and flowering we had ever seen. In the second year of recovery after a permanent cover crop reset, the vineyard saw robust growth and lush foliage. A heat event in August didn’t affect our 4 acres of Chardonnay, which delivered a historically high yield for our vineyard. The wines from 2023 have good concentration, slightly relaxed acids, and are wonderfully approachable in their youth.