2015 Lemelson Vineyards Pinot Noir Thea's Selection Willamette Valley 750 ml

Sourced From Seven Organic-Farmed Parcels

The release of the 2015 Lemelson Vineyards Pinot Noir Thea’s Selection Willamette Valley was hotly anticipated, as it came on the heels of a Wine Spectator Top 100 showing from their 2014 wine. Like its predecessor, it over-delivers in a big way, earning a 93-point score from James Suckling.

2015 was a landmark vintage in the Willamette Valley, impressive enough to all but bump the 2014 growing season—which at the time was causing celebrations of its own—from the collective memory. This is a ripe and beautifully spiced Oregon Pinot Noir from a top vintage—a beautiful exemplar of West Coast Pinot, and a fantastic addition to any cellar.

The 2014 Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs roared into the history books as what seemed like a once-in-a-lifetime vintage: one that propelled many Willamette Pinots to stunning scores and Lemelson Thea’s Selection into the Wine Spectator Top 100. Naturally, many assumed that the memory of the glorious vintage would linger. They were wrong. Wine Spectator predicted that 2015 “could be the state’s most extraordinary vintage.”  

Lemelson owns 12 percent of the organic vineyard land in Oregon, and Thea’s Selection is sourced from seven of their organic parcels, which the Willamette Valley’s Yamhill-Carlton, Chehalem Mountains, and Dundee Hills AVAs and soaked up the stellar vintage from an array of elevations and aspects. These sites have been farmed organically since inception, in a declaration of founder Eric Lemelson’s environmental ideals that extends well beyond the vines: Lemelson’s gravity-flow winery, which processed its first harvest in 1999, was built and continues to be improved using the most environmentally sound methods and materials available.

Consisting of Wädenswil, Pommard, and Dijon clones, the grapes for Thea’s Selection were harvested over 20 temperate days in September of 2015. They were mostly destemmed, fermented using indigenous yeasts, then aged for 15 months in 30 percent new French oak barrels, which imbued the silky, red-fruited wine with vanilla, cardamom, and fine tannins. Drinking beautifully now, this wine will offer a window into one of Willamette Valley’s top vintages ever for the next several years.