2021 Ponzi Vineyards Pinot Noir Laurelwood District Willamette Valley 750 ml

Luisa Ponzi was the first American to receive a Certficate Brevet Professionelle d’Oenologie et Viticulture from Burgundy’s prestigious winemaking school, but when we visited Ponzi’s four-story gravity-flow winery last week, she was nonchalant about the curriculum she learned in France. After all, her father had been making “Oregon's most complex Pinot Noirs,” according to Robert Parker, and she’d been learning at his side since she was a little girl. 

Her 2021 Laurelwood District Pinot Noir is a wine with voluptuous charm, a benchmark from one of America’s premier Pinot-growing areas and a family Robert Parker called “a reference point for American Pinot Noir.” It’s a signature bottling, bearing the name of the recently created Laurelwood District AVA, an appellation for which Luisa and her family lobbied for years. 

In the 2021 vintage, midsummer heat thickened the skins of the grapes before a moderate autumn preserved acidity and tension, producing the kind of Pinot that’s always gotten our members excited about Oregon. It’s also the initial year this wine was made under the auspices of legendary Champagne house Bollinger, who chose Ponzi as the first winery they acquired outside France.

Luisa loves to serve her Pinot Noir with lamb—especially when it's rubbed with herbes de Provence—citing the wine’s ability to pair with the lavender in the rub and cut through the fat of the red meat. Later that night, we enjoyed her father’s 1990 Anniversary Reserve with burgers and seaweed butter-slicked cabbage at the James Beard–nominated OK Omens in Portland, and it was a thrilling match to both. We wouldn’t hesitate to serve the 2021 with the same menu, or to declare that Luisa’s wines are—and will be—just as timeless.