This wine honors the dedicated work of our harvest crew. Each vintage, a few winemaking students from across the globe come to Elk Cove to experience a Willamette Valley vintage. They work long hours as we transform fruit into wine. In 2019, our “Harvest Cru, managed a single whole-cluster lot of Pinot Noir from our Mount Richmond Vineyard to create this robust and fruit-forward Pinot Noir.
VINTAGE 2019 required experience and courage. After 45 years, we often say there isn’t a harvest we haven’t seen, but 2019 was an odd one. After a warm May and a healthy, early fruit-set, the summer ended cool with no threat of the sunburn or hazy, smoky skies seen in recent years. We expected to pick in early September, but weeks of unseasonably cool weather took us by surprise. Rather than rushing to pick too early, we waited patiently for concentrations and sugar levels to rise, confident that our vineyard practices would protect the fruit.
According to Winemaker/Owner Adam Campbell “You pick your moments. If you’re 100% estate grown and you have impeccable timing – you can grow fantastic fruit in any year. It took months of preparation in the vineyard, and some very long days during crush, but we had a great crew in 2019 and managed to get sugar levels right where we want them.”
Our goal is a minimum 100 days from bloom to harvest; 2019 saw hang times as long as 125 days in some blocks. Expect wines with a big ripe core of concentrated fruit and a bright, fresh profile.
Mount Richmond Vineyard sits on Willakenzie soils in the heart of the Yamhill Carlton AVA. The site was purchased in 1996 as a partnership between winemaker Adam Campbell, his wife Carrie, and Elk Cove founders Pat and Joe Campbell.
The motivation for planting Mount Richmond was to emulate the wine quality from sites such as our esteemed Roosevelt vineyard. The vineyard now holds the honor as the largest vineyard holding of Elk Cove, totaling over 200 planted acres.
Mount Richmond sits at 300-500 feet elevation, lower than the vineyards planted at the winery, which allows for earlier ripening. Planted in a high-density format (2100 vines/acre), similar to Roosevelt, Mount Richmond sits on rolling hills just outside the town of Yamhill to the east of the Coast Range Mountains. In addition to Pinot Noir, starting in 2015 we planted three Dijon clones of Chardonnay on its lower south-facing slopes.
This special lot of Mount Richmond East fruit was lovingly vinted by our 2019 harvest interns. The “cru” included six winemaking students from around the world.
I only bought one bottle of this back in 2021, and it was properly cellared at 55 degrees since purchase. When opened, the wine smelled bad and tasted of vinegar. Down the drain it went! I am a wine club member and have purchased dozens of cases over the years and this is my first bad bottle. Maybe there was a reason this was only offered in 2019?
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Hi John! Thanks for reviewing our Harvest Cru. You may have been the unlikely recipient of a bad cork. We do our best to source high quality corks by working with companies that test all of their corks for physical integrity and TCA and yet we still have the occasional cork that doesn’t stand up to aging. Corks are a natural product and they are variable. It sounds like yours let in too much air and your wine ended up oxidizing. May we send you a replacement bottle?
Our Harvest Cru has been adopted by our sister winery Pike Road, you will now find it here: https://www.pikeroadwines.com/product/2022-Harvest-Cru-Pinot-Noir
This decision was made because of Pike Road’s collaborative mission. The story of honoring our Harvest Cru members by bottling their wine (if it’s up to our standards) and how Pike Road honors our grower partners around the valley just made sense to us.
Anna – anna@elkcove.com