2012 Domaine Serene Pinot Noir Yamhill Cuvee Willamette Valley 750 ml

Rolling Out the Red Carpet in the Dundee Hills

There may be no more enjoyable wine trail in the world than Oregon’s Willamette Valley (aside from the ride to Newberg from the Portland airport). We spent five exhilarating days in Oregon in mid-September. Harvest was in full swing from the Dundee Hills to Ribbon Ridge. Based on the berries we tasted off a half-dozen sorting tables, this is — like 2012 and 2014 — still another extraordinary year for Oregon that will make for deep, dark Pinot Noirs of great intensity and complexity.

Ten years ago, with the exception of a few small B&Bs, there wasn’t a hotel in the valley worth writing about. All that changed when The Allison Inn & Spa opened its doors on Sept. 25, 2009. Managing Director Pierre Zreik operates one of the tightest ships this side of Napa Valley’s Meadowood Resort. Set on 35 manicured acres above Newberg, the decor is breathtaking, paying homage to the outdoors. The wallpaper in our guest room was earth-toned. The stone patio outside led us along an idyllic garden path. The bathroom was spacious and beautifully appointed. The sheets and pillowcases were ultra-soft — though given our daily consumption of Pinot Noir, we could have flopped on a bed of volcanic gravel and slept like babies.

On Day 1, after sausage and eggs, a bowl of raspberries, and three mugs of piping hot, locally roasted coffee, we drove south on 99W for 15 minutes, then hung a right on Breyman Orchards Road. Five minutes later, we pulled in the driveway of what some have called Oregon’s Romanée-Conti, the Evenstad family’s Domaine Serene. Lucas Willett, the winery’s 6’4” hospitality director, was waiting for us, ready to roll out a red carpet that would make Opus One proud.

In 1989, Lucas explained, Ken and Grace Evenstad purchased 42 acres in the Dundee Hills. Nine years later, the family acquired the first 80 acres of what would eventually be a historic 180-acre land grab, one mile north of the original property. They named the property Winery Hill.

Over the last 15 years, no American Pinot Noir maker not named Sea Smoke, Kistler, Kosta Browne, or Peter Michael has received more critical attention than Domaine Serene. Robert Parker, Wine Spectator, and Wine Enthusiast have treated the Evenstads’ gorgeously honeyed, wonderfully Burgundian Pinots to a steady diet of 93- to 97-point scores. On Wine Spectator’s list of the Top 100 wines of 2013, the Domaine Serene Evenstad Reserve Pinot Noir finished #3. And in 2004, Domaine Serene bested Domaine de la Romanée-Conti in a taste-off that turned heads from Portland to Vosne-Romanée.

But if you were to ask winemaker Erik Kramer, Lucas Willett, or Ken Evenstad to name the most extraordinary Oregon vintage since the winery’s first release, there would be complete consensus. Domaine Serene’s 2012 Pinot Noirs are instant classics, combining lavish New World opulence with classic Burgundian cut — few more wild-berry luscious than the Yamhill Cuvée.

The 2012 Domaine Serene Pinot Noir Yamhill Cuvée is brilliant ruby in hue. Smoky red and dark-berry aromas, black cherry cola, bracketed by new-French-cooperage vanilla. Rich, sleekly contoured, and wonderfully suave, filled with crushed red fruit and black cherry preserves, Vosne-like in texture and contour, finishing with great tension and energy, arguing for a 7- to 10-year stay in the coolest of cellars.

$47 on release. $40 this morning. ALL buyers of six bottles or more will receive an invitation from the winery for a three-hour vineyard and cellar tour, followed by a VIP private tasting for two at Domaine Serene.