St. Innocent Shea Vineyard Pinot Noir 2019
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Wine & Spirits
Burly and supremely flavorful, Shea vineyard fruit plays to Mark Vlossak’s strengths, making for a dark spicy wine with Dr. Pepper scents, hints of sassafras and carob, ushered along by assertive oak notes. The palate is vinous but velvety, packed with flavor yet delivered with surprising precision.
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Wine Enthusiast
A really intriguing mix of red fruit and tangerines highlight an aromatic set that also features touches of leather and loamy soil. All the raspberry flavor you can handle is on tap, along with tastes of smoked almonds and citrus. The wine’s juicy acidity is matched by significant tannic structure.
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James Suckling
Notes of ripe cherries and wild strawberries with dried currant leaf, citrus peel and moist earth. Medium-bodied, creamy and fleshy with silky tannins and bright acidity. Flavorful finish.
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Wine Spectator
Precise and multilayered, with cherry, pomegranate, black tea and forest floor tones that build structure toward fine-grained tannins. Drink now through 2029. 1,275 cases made.
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2018- Vinous
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St. Innocent Winery was founded in May 1988 by Mark Vlossak, the current winemaker and president, and eight investors. Ten tons of grapes were crushed the first fall, producing 396 cases of still and 176 cases of sparkling wine. Production increased to our full capacity of 6800 cases in 2004. The winery is located in Salem, Oregon, at the southeast corner of the Eola Hills, in the mid-Willamette valley.
St. Innocent produces small lot, handmade wines: seven single vineyard Pinot Noirs and a blended Pinot Noir called the Villages Cuvée, two Chardonnay from Dijon clone plantings, two Pinot Gris, and a Pinot Blanc.
The philosophy behind the winemaking at St Innocent is that the function of wine is to complement and extend the pleasure of a meal. The characteristics of a wine should enhance different food and flavor combinations - this interaction amplifies the pleasure of a meal. To this end, St. Innocent wines tend toward higher acid levels, and more diverse and balanced flavors.
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.