Gran Moraine Pinot Noir Terminal Moraine (Willamette Barrel Auction) 2017
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Behold Ye! The Terminal Moraine! Within this bottle is placed the maximum advancement toward awesomeness that the Gran Moraine team and vineyard may bestow upon the earth.
Crafting Oregon wines with a signature style of elegance and restraint, Gran Moraine produces Chardonnay, Pinot noir, and sparkling wines from the Willamette Valley. Our estate vineyards perch on some of the oldest marine sedimentary–based soils in the Yamhill-Carlton nested AVA of the northern Willamette Valley. Our wines showcase winemaker Shane Moore’s tireless attention to detail in both the vineyard and the winery, which translates to precision and elegance in the bottle. At Gran Moraine, we believe in picking fruit on the cusp of ripeness to maintain the most pure, intense and expressive fruit characteristics. With its cool climate, the Yamhill-Carlton nested AVA has temperate growing conditions that allow for longer hang time on the vine, which helps to preserve acidity and promote the nuanced fruit and earth characteristics—a signature of Gran Moraine wines.
Oregon Wine Country, an extraordinary place sculpted by the floods of the last ice age, is a series of valleys much like Burgundy. The Yamhill Carlton AVA, located in the northern Willamette Valley, consists of ancient marine sedimentary-based soils, Mediterranean weather patterns and neatly combed benchlands. Gran Moraine embodies the confluence of these elements, creating a perfect setting to craft classic Burgundian varieties - Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.
Gran Moraine takes its name from cataclysmic floods that occurred in the northern Willamette Valley of Oregon during the last ice age. As the glaciers receded they released a torrent of water from the once giant Lake Missoula. These famous Missoula Floods traveled across the Columbia basin helping to carve out the Columbia Gorge.
The Willamette Valley became an extremely large temporary lake and was left with huge deposits of silt as well as giant boulders with origins in current British Columbia and Idaho. These are known by geologists as erratic rocks. These erratic rock outcroppings boldly manifest themselves throughout our vineyard. They were once part of the giant glacial dam’s moraine – what we refer to as the "Gran Moraine."
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Yamhill-Carlton, characterized by pastoral, rolling hills composed of shallow, quick-draining, ancient marine soil, is ideal for Pinot noir and other cool-climate-loving varieties. It is in the rain shadow of the Coast Range to its west, whose highest point climbs to an altitude of 3,500 feet. Yamhill-Carlton is actually surrounded by mountains on three sides: Chehalem Mountains to the north, the Dundee Hills to the east and the western Coast Range to its west, which, when it lets Pacific air through, serves to cool the region.
Vineyards grow on the ridges surrounding the two small communities of Yamhill and Carlton and cover about 1,200 acres of this 60,000 acre region, which roughly makes a horse-shoe shape on a map.