Vintage

2012 will go down as one of the finest in Oregon history in terms of quality of the raw materials. Mother Nature really smiled on us with not only a rain-free harvest season but perhaps more importantly with tiny berries and clusters. The small fruit size allowed us to effortlessly and gently extract the concentrated fruit and ripe tannins of the perfectly ripe grapes.

According to owner/winemaker Adam Campbell “The wines from 2012 remind me and my folks of classic vintages like 1998 and 1994. Small clusters and berries give us an amazing skin-to-juice ratio, allowing us to be incredibly gentle through fermentation and still come up with powerful concentration and ripeness of fruit.”

Early reviews of the 2012 vintage use descriptors like “Stunning”, “Amazing” & “Epic” making Oregon winemakers giddy that 2012 could go down as the best vintage in our 50 year winemaking history.

Vineyard

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 105 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 in rolling hills just outside the town of Yamhill just East of the Coast Range Mountains. In addition to the old vine pommard selection, planted from select cuttings off of Roosevelt Vineyard, the blend now also includes equal parts of Dijon clones 115 and 777.

Vineyard Manager Travis Watson says of Mount Richmond East: “Our ideal site is an inverted bowl on one of these hilltops for various reasons: air drainage, water drainage, everything about it is that much better, even if it rolls a little bit to the north or two the west everything is better. But it’s all site specific, everything is site-specific. This is sedimentary marine, very little top soil. It’s fantastic for Pinot Noir.”