2019 Hiyu Wine Farm Atavus Red (Pinot Noir) Columbia Valley, USA

2019 Hiyu Wine Farm Atavus Red (Pinot Noir) Columbia Valley, USA

$91.00

“The Atavus red wine plays a stately counterpoint to the Atavus white wine’s radically experimental style. Our approach to this wine has become more refined with each vintage as we try to tap into the alpine delicacy possible from the old vines on this high-altitude site. We don’t do anything to control the fermentation, and the direction they take is always mysterious.”

“We’ve made wine from the site since our second vintage in 2013, and it connects us to both the origins of our project and to the history of grape growing in the Western Gorge. (Hence its name, meaning grandfather or ancestor in Latin.) The vineyard was planted at the same time as the first Pinot Noir vineyards in the Willamette Valley, but at triple the elevation. The high elevation meant that growing grapes on the site was extremely challenging in the cooler growing seasons that defined the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s in the Pacific Northwest.”

Grape: Pinot Noir

Vineyard: Atavus. Planted in the 1960s at the western end of a south-facing ridge overlooking the Columbia River at Mt. Hood.

Making of: the grapes are handpicked and left to ferment with indigenous yeast. It was on the skins for 11 days and only required pigeage twice. Unfined, unfiltered.

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