2017 Gemini Vineyard WV Pinot

Thesis: Bombast + Acid = Red is red is red

A Story: “Undeniable deliciousness” is a vote-with-your-feet kind of thing. There’s just something truthful about the first bottle drained, the statement “I really like that wine” and the consensus of well-covering a meal. The wines from Gemini tend to do that. It’s a low-noise trajectory that holds up. We’re in.

The Cliff Notes: The wine opens translucent violet red. The nose is red vines and blueberry taffy with Christmas spice and pencil, Ticonderoga #2. On the palate both fruit and structure are punchy red with lingering notes of raspberry, cherry Fruit Stripe gum (passionfruit), blood orange and peppermint. The structure is backseat, but substantial, and destined to swimmingly drive this bottling forward through the next decade.

The Building of: Six- to eight-barrel-lots, wild-yeast fermentations in stainless steel, 100% barrel aged for 16 months in French oak (no new, one once-filled, four older), selected and assembled as the best of the best. Bottled unfined and unfiltered in February 2019.

Ageability: We absolutely recommend that you consider decanting to get it some air within its first three years. This wine should easily climb in complexity beyond a dozen years.

Vineyards: The Laurelwood soil of Gemini Vineyard in the Chehalem Mountains AVA is a rich, wind-blown loess that contributes vigor to the plants and good acid to the wines made from these grapes, which are grafted 27-year-old, Scott Henry–trained, Pommard-clone Pinot noir.

—  Jim Prosser, owner/winemaker