Bethel Heights Estate Pinot Noir
| Vintage: | 2021 |
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| Description: | Eola-Amity Hills\r\nLive Certified Sustainable Wine\r\nWinemaker Notes\r\n\r\nThe Pinot Noir Estate is always the best place to start when evaluating our success or shortcoming in any given vintage. It incorporates nearly all their estate vineyard in various amounts, and as such provides an honest evaluation of the year. The 2021 Estate Pinot Noir reflects the multifaceted nature of the vintage: the abundance of fruit from their early picks under sunny skies and the earthen complexity we found from our older vines picked in cooler October weather. Blending the Estate is often their most difficult task because it is our largest bottling each vintage, and thus includes both our successes and shortcomings. Thanks to diligent farming from our vineyard team, attention to detail, and a fantastic winemaking team for harvest, the 2021 Estate Pinot Noir contains only successes.\r\nSleek and handsomely structured, with expressive raspberry and red plum flavors laced with black tea, forest floor and hints of mineral, building tension toward medium-grained tannins.\r\nWine Spectator 93 Points\r\n\r\nAbout Bethel Heights Vineyard\r\n\r\nSUSTAINABLY Grown WINE\r\nWhen our family arrived at Bethel Heights in 1977 we found a flourishing ecosystem in place: healthy living soils, a stream running through a shady ravine fed by a pure clean spring, and a rich diversity of flora and fauna with which we try to live in peace.\u00a0 Above all else we seek to grow our grapes and make our wine without diminishing the vibrant life of this place.\r\nTwenty-five acres at Bethel Heights are set aside as a natural wooded riparian area.\r\nWe maintain a permanent green cover in the vine rows to build healthy soils, to sequester carbon, to mitigate erosion, to retain moisture, to promote maximum biodiversity above and below ground, and to allow the unseen mycorrhiza beneath our feet to thrive and continue their symbiotic relationship with our vines.\r\nWe have farmed without herbicides since 2009, without tilling the soil since 2012, and without any synthetic inputs whatsoever since 2019.\r\nIn the winery we are transitioning to significantly less carbon-intensive packaging, and significantly less water and energy use.\u00a0 Solar panels installed in 2010 provide 60% of our energy needs.\r\nWe recognize that we owe our success in all our endeavors to the people who work here, in the vineyard and in the winery, and we strive to share our success in a just distribution of benefits.\r\n\r\n\r\nCertifications\r\nWe know of no certification program that encompasses everything that matters for the future of Bethel Heights, for our community, and for the planet, but we choose to certify what we can, to provide some assurance to our customers.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nBethel Heights Vineyard and Justice Vineyard are certified organic, sealing our commitment to farming our crop without any use of synthetic chemicals.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nBethel Heights Vineyard and Justice Vineyard have been\u00a0LIVE Certified\u00a0since 1997.\u00a0 Ted Casteel of Bethel Heights was one of the founders of Live, which requires a comprehensive certification of the whole farm, not just the crop, based on continual reduction of off-farm inputs by reliance on natural processes. Live winery certification requires reduction of energy and water consumption in the winery.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nUnited by our interest in wine, in 1977 Ted Casteel, Pat Dudley, Terry Casteel, and Marilyn Webb abandoned the academic life and, together with Pat\u2019s sister Barbara Dudley, bought 75 promising-looking acres northwest of Salem, with 14 acres of newly planted cuttings in the ground.\u00a0We moved to the vineyard in 1978 (except Barbara, who was in California working as a lawyer for farmworkers with the Agricultural Labor Relations Board) and started a new life.\u00a0In 1979 we cleared and planted 36 more acres. In 1981 we harvested our first crop and started home winemaking in Terry\u2019s basement. In 1984 we produced our first commercial vintage of 3000 cases: Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Chenin Blanc and Gewurztraminer, all Estate Grown.\r\nFor the first thirty years Ted was responsible for managing the vineyards and Terry made the wine. Pat and Marilyn shared responsibilities for marketing and business management. Over thirty years we grew our wine production to 10,000 cases, and made common cause with our fellow pioneers to establish the Willamette Valley as the home of New World Pinot Noir.\r\nMeanwhile, five cousins grew up knowing the tidy rows and wild hidden places of Bethel Heights as their backyard playground, science lab and adventure park. Now they have taken their places as co-owners, co-workers, and stewards of this place.\r\nIn 2005\u00a0Ben Casteel\u00a0(son of Terry and Marilyn) took over from his father as Winemaker at Bethel Heights. In 2007\u00a0Jon Casteel\u00a0(second son of Terry and Marilyn) launched Casteel Custom Bottling, a mobile bottling company that serves wineries throughout Oregon, including Bethel Heights of course.\u00a0Mimi Casteel\u00a0(daughter of Ted and Pat) worked with the family at Bethel Heights until 2017 when she started farming her own vineyard at Hope Well, and launched her Hope Well Wine project.\u00a0Jessie Casteel\u00a0grew up among the vines at Bethel Heights, but now lives in Chicago. Jessie brings a creative outlier perspective to the direction of the family business, and serves as our ambassador in Chicago and points east.\r\nNow there is a new generation of cousins \u2013 ten so far \u2013 who all come home to Bethel Heights for family occasions, to eat the blackberries and taste the grapes and pat the goats and walk through the ravine to Mr. Hatcher\u2019s haunted house. This place is now for them too. |
| Price: | $ 31.99 |
| Price in original currency: | None |
Available from BASSER’S Fine Wine
| Address: |
6240 Coral Ridge Drive Coral Springs, FL 33076 United States |
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| Telephone (regular): | 954-840-3122 |
First added to 1000 Corks on February 20, 2023.
