In The Glass: Angela Pinot Noir 2009 (Willamette Valley)

With fruit from Clawson Creek Vineyard, which sits next to Ken Wright’s highly revered Abbott Claim Vineyard in Oregon’s Yamhill-Carlton AVA, the vintage 2009 Angela Pinot Noir was tasted on a day filled with sampling well over 50 wines, and it was the one that absolutely stood out of the crowd. After finding out Ken Wright was the winemaker behind the Angela Pinot, it all made sense – I am a huge fan of Ken Wright’s wines.

Aside from Ken Wright being the winemaker, there’s quite a powerhouse of people with a passion for wine behind the Angela label. According to information obtained from AngelaPinotNoir.com, Vineyard manager Mark Gould “unleashes the spectacular qualities of the soil to enrich the perfectly matched vines.” An excellent match with Ken, “who always allows and develops each vineyard to express its true “sense of space”. Vineyard owners, Antony and Angela Beck along with Rob and Kim Rosenstein, share a common passion for wine while individually bringing important elements to the success of the Angela brand. Angela Beck is well-known for the creation of Pomegranate, a spectacular line of high end home decor products, and her husband, along with his family, owns the world-renowned Graham Beck wineries in South Africa. Kim Rosenstein, also known as Dr. Kim Clawson, is a “practitioner of integrative medicine and views Pinot Noir, a varietal whose quality is entirely dependent on sound agricultural procedures, as the vinous embodiment of that holistic philosophy.” Rob Rosenstein is not only a nationally known wine merchant, he is also a real estate developer and understands and appreciates the fact that “quality wine is directly related to the attributes of the land where the grapes are grown. Combining the talents and knowledge of these six individuals has clearly come full circle with an end result that’s well worth writing about.

The 2009 Angela Oregon Pinot Noir shines with all of the characteristics that I love to find in Willamette Valley Pinots: cherries, cranberries (commonly detected in the ’09 vintage), pie spice, earth and a touch of roses and vanilla. Beautiful acidity rounds out the fruit, and the juicy entrance on to the palate flows in silky waves to a lingering finish. Indeed, this is my kind of Pinot, I absolutely loved it.