2024 Provocateur WV Pinot Noir

Were all the years this good, I might…

The Cliff Notes: It shows in glass as beautiful translucent bluish-red. It smells of crushed loganberries, tan spice, and summer morning field grass. Pomegranate Kool-Aid might be the overarching palate, followed by toast, orange marmalade, mixed-berry, and plum spice accents. The structure is fine with superb acid driving energy and enough tannin to lift, but not dominate the fruit.

The Name: Provocateur. Yes, troublemaker. One trouble is life. Some think it better to avoid all those things that make one feverish. And friendly, fat and happy. Fair, they’ll probably live forever. Though, we’ll take our chances on food and drink and community. We’ll meet at the table, not every night, but as we can. In the off chance we might belly laugh.

A Story: The 2024 vintage was a fairly straightforward growing year, with adequate rain into May, not a lot of excess heat stress and temperatures that moderated in the final month leading to a lovely old-school Sept/Oct harvest. Once again, we threw our all at our certified organic dry farming (non-irrigated) including intensive grazing with sheep, sap flow pruning, analysis-based nutrition, high-mowing cover crop, and on-farm built compost at scale. In the measure of warm/power vs. cool/grace the vintage clocked in with both hands equidistant pointing at midnight.

Fermentation: Small-lot wild yeast fermentations in open-top wood and stainless steel tanks. Limited pre-ferment maceration, followed by minimal, but targeted temperature and punch-down intervention.

Elevage: 100% barrel aged for 16 months in in 16% new French oak. Racked and bottled unfined and unfiltered in February 2026.

Ageability: Drink now to seven years and think about getting it some air in the first three.

Vineyards: All our vineyards are dry-farmed (non-irrigated). The broad majority of these grapes came from our certified organic, high-elevation St. Dolores Estate (16 years), plus a portion from Gemini Vineyard (31 years). Both are in the Chehalem Mtns. AVA.

— Jim Prosser, owner/winemaker