2021 Lange Winery Pinot Noir Reserve Willamette Valley 750 ml

On our visit last week, we asked Jesse Lange how his Reserve Pinot Noir managed to be so good, year after year. His response surprised us:

“We take eight months to put the blend together.”

We’d heard of—and even sat for—some extensive blending trials. But fine-tuning a blend over that much time reveals an attention to detail that’s nearly unheard of. Although, given the man behind the bottle, we shouldn’t have been too surprised.

Lange, an obsessive farmer, calls all the shots on when to pick and tracks the fruit to the crush pad, and he has a preternatural knowledge of what’s in his cellar. “We can barrel-taste 400 Pinot Noir barrels, and I can tell you the provenance of every one: fermentation, harvest data, soil type, clone…”  

With the Reserve, Jesse’s only goal is to capture the essence of his phenomenal vineyard sources, plus the character of each Willamette Valley vintage—and he called 2021 “spectacular.”

“It was hot in July, but we had an absolutely perfect end of the growing season,” he raved. That allowed him to harvest each site at the exact right time, with the temperate fall weather preserving incredible vibrancy in the tiny berries, whose skins had thickened in the midsummer heat.

We ended our time with Jesse by drinking one of his 2014 Estate Pinots, which is really kicking into gear, showing the subtlety and nuance that comes with bottle age but also hinting at a long life ahead. This 2021 Reserve is clearly cut from the same cloth: It’s delicious now, and will be absolutely stunning when it hits a decade.