Domaine Serene Chardonnay Evenstad Reserve Dundee Hills Willamette Valley 2021 (750ml)

 

Rated 95 Points by James Suckling

 

Nicely chalky and textural, this mineral-laden, medium-bodied wine goes deep and long, offering bright green apples alongside white peaches, toasted almonds and touches of butter and vanilla.

 

Rated 95 Points Owen Bargreen

 

The 2021 Domaine Serene ‘Evenstad Reserve’ Chardonnay is a blockbuster effort from this warm vintage as 40% of this wine was sourced from the Triple Crown Vineyard.  The nose is outstanding with toasted walnut, white peach, wets stone and shades of lemon rind.  This is very ripe and heady with an outstanding texture and sense of weight.  This beauty will easily go for another ten plus years — and is already providing some serious drinking enjoyment.  Drink 2023-2033

 

Rated 93 Points by Wine Enthusiast 

 

Orchard fruit meets the tropics here, with apricots duking it out with passion fruit for aromatic supremacy.  I also enjoyed the wine's floral and spicy mix of plumeria and gardenia.  The flavors are a wall of lemon, with lemon bars and lemon balm tea holding court, joined by a bit of saline.  Lively acidity is a bonus.  Michael Alberty

 

Domaine Serene Chardonnay Evenstad Reserve

 

Dundee Hills Willamette Valley 2021

 

Appellation:  Dundee Hills

 

Varietal:  100% Chardonnay

 

Harvest Date:  September 7, 2021 To September 21, 2021

 

Bottling Date:  January 31, 2023

 

Barrel Aging:  15 Months, 22% New French Oak

 

Alcohol:  13.7%

 

The ‘Evenstad Reserve’ Chardonnay represents the art of blending select barrels from our estate vineyard sites in the Dundee Hills.  Our belief is that the combination of Dijon clone vines, Jory soil, and the high elevation of our Dundee Hills estates gives us fruit of unparalleled quality for this reserve wine. 

 

Tasting Notes

 

In this 2021 vintage, we were able to capture more ripe fruit, which makes this a classic Evenstad Reserve.  The nose of this wine is lemon and lime with pineapple and guava, which produces great minerality in the nose.  The palate is full of limestone, lemon, earthy fruit, and silk texture where it's soft and smooth and affects different locations in the mouth.  The finish is smooth, brighter, and light.  Pairs well with roasted acorn squash or a grilled pork dish.

 

Dundee Hills AVA

 

The Dundee Hills AVA is an American Viticultural Area located in Yamhill County, Oregon.  It is entirely contained within the Willamette Valley AVA, and is approximately 28 miles southwest of Portland, near the towns of Dundee and Dayton.  The area is 6,940 acres in total size, with 1,300 acres planted with grapes.

 

The Dundee Hills are a north-south oriented line of hills on the western side of the Willamette River Valley.  The soil is red in color, rich in iron, relatively infertile, making it suitable for grape cultivation.  The region gets 30 inches (76 cm) to 45 inches (114 cm) of rainfall per year.  The Chehalem Mountains to the north protect the region from the cool breezes that enter Willamette Valley from the Columbia Gorge.  Over 25 wineries and independent vineyards in this region produce over 44,000 cases of wine.

 

The Domaine Serene Difference

 

The art of blending is the hallmark of Domaine Serene’s winemaking philosophy.  The signature silky style and smooth texture of our wines is no accident, and is achieved in the winery through an artful, yet scientific approach that takes winemaking precision to an uncommon level.  A meticulous approach to vineyard management utilizes dry-farming and sustainable practices along with carefully managed yields to coax the optimal flavor and balance from the vines.  Each block is handled separately for complete terroir transparency.  From rigorous hand sorting, through as many as 250 micro-cru fermentations each vintage, to a diverse extended barrel-aging program, our estate vineyard sites are kept separate throughout the winemaking process until they are artfully assembled in the final cuvée before bottling.  Each individual barrel is carefully assessed throughout the year, with multiple trial blends developed, to ultimately determine ideal final blends that deliver against the stylistic goals of the wines we create.  Once bottled, the rare luxury of space in our winery allows for extended bottle aging of a minimum of 1-2 years for Pinot Noir.  This ensures flavors are well integrated and ready to be enjoyed upon release.  Our five-level winery is designed to use gravity flow for moving wine from one stage of the winemaking process to the next, a time-tested approach for transferring wine gently to help preserve its pure terroir expression.

 

It All Starts In The Vineyard

 

At Domaine Serene, our approach to quality starts in the vineyard.  Our six dry-farmed vineyard estates are all LIVE certified sustainable and deliver extremely low yields, and represent a diverse array of microclimates, elevations, exposures and soil types.  Clonal selection for both Chardonnay and Pinot Noir is site-specific: selecting the perfect clone and rootstock combination for individual blocks within each of our vineyard estates is critical.  Additionally, Domaine Serene owns some of Oregon’s oldest Dijon clone Chardonnay vineyards, all of which are planted on volcanic Jory soils at high elevations and result in Chardonnays of stunning balance and complexity.  At harvest, each distinct block of vines is handpicked and kept separate in small bins to maintain pristine fruit condition, and are carefully marked to indicate site sourcing. 

 

The Princess of Grapes

 

Grapes that are fresh, cool and unbruised are much less susceptible to oxidation, so Domaine Serene typically harvests in early morning when the fruit is still naturally chilled.  We use quarter-ton bins – about half industry-standard size – to limit cumulative weight that can smash the whole berries.  Upon arrival at the winery, the newly picked fruit is staged in a cool space adjacent to the receiving doorway.  A team of 6-8 skilled sorters quickly remove unwanted leaves and other material from the grape clusters on a sorting table, which moves the fruit along in front of them as they work.  Both Grace and Ken Evenstad can often be found manning the sorting table during harvest.  Grape clusters are gently destemmed and the whole berries slide down to the fermentation level, minimizing bruising as they are delivered to the open-top fermenter one story below.  There they are cooled with dry ice to begin the gentle aqueous extraction phase that Ken Evenstad pioneered in Oregon in the early 1990’s.  Grace Evenstad likes to say, “Pinot Noir is the princess of all grapes: it knows everything you’ve done to it and always remembers.”  With this in mind, our many thoughtful design elements make it possible to gently and efficiently deliver whole, intact berries from bin to tank, in excellent condition and well prepared for the next stage in their transformation to world-class wine.

 

Pinot Noir Fermentation

 

The Pinot Noir varietal is notoriously more complicated.  The fruit is first allowed to “cold soak” for about a week before fermentation is started.  During this phase, at Domaine Serene we typically use dry ice layered throughout the fruit to keep it cool and prevent oxidation, a method Ken Evenstad is personally credited with pioneering in Oregon in the early 1990’s.  After an extended aqueous extraction phase the Pinot Noir must is then inoculated with specific yeast strains and individualized punch-down strategies, selected to optimize extraction and desired terroir characteristics for each individual batch.  As fermentation gets underway, bins of Pinot Noir may be moved between cooler and warmer rooms to either slow down or speed up the metabolic process.  All of our wines – Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Sparkling – are exposed to different temperatures at various stages of fermentation.  Eventually the fermenting red wine undergoes a customized pressing protocol, with a slow, precise and gentle press cycle that helps avoid harsh tannins while extracting flavor from the grape skins.  Finally the pressed wine is transferred into closed top tanks for settling, before being gently transferred to barrel via gravity flow.  Throughout all of these processes every batch is kept separate, and tanks of different dimensions are utilized to maximize quality potential for each of our up to 250+ micro-crus.  Before racking our Pinot Noir to remove unwanted solids, we allow prolonged settling times in tank to promote maximum “clarity” of fruit flavor.

 

Customized Barrel Aging

 

Domaine Serene uses as many as 70 different barrel types from its fifteen different French coopers to fulfill our barrel needs.  Every single barrel of wine – more than one thousand in most vintages – is tracked individually in a database by fruit source and harvest date, and by the age, size, forest-source and toast level of the barrel itself.  Benefitting from decades of experience, our winemaking team has learned to pair certain cooperages and oak types with specific vineyard blocks to entice the best out of the wine.  At Domaine Serene we ferment as well as age our Chardonnay in French oak barrels, and move the fermenting wine between cooler and warmer rooms depending on the stage of fermentation in a given barrel.  Yeast variation and its influence on our white wines is carefully tracked: some yeasts enhance floral aromatics while some give more tropical fruit characteristics, and others are more austere or provide mid-palate weight.  While we use a significant amount of new oak barrels to build complexity and depth in our wines, the goal is always to achieve a harmonious balance between the wine’s fruit flavors and oak influence.  Our three large barrel rooms allow ample space for aging more than one vintage at a time, a luxury most wineries cannot afford.  Domaine Serene wines typically spend 14 to 18 months in barrel.  Each barrel room is carefully monitored to maintain ideal levels of humidity, temperature and air circulation.

 

The Blender’s Art

 

Tasting and blending exercises are painstakingly conducted throughout the year to arrive at ideal blends.  Both Grace and Ken Evenstad are hands-on participants and leading members of the winemaking team.  At this point in the winemaking process, the many layers of potential complexity generated during various earlier stages provide a rich palette of flavor, texture and aroma elements from which our master blenders can choose.  These elements include terroir aspects from up to 250 micro-crus, variations in batch and tank management, yeast selection and oak regime.  While most wineries can determine a blend in one day, or even a few hours, the blending process at Domaine Serene can take in excess of one year.  This painstaking approach is critical to fully understand the complex interactions between multiple components and their role in the final blend.  Finally, once the master blends have been created and the wine is ready to move into bottle, our in-house bottling line gives us complete flexibility to produce small or large batches of wine at just the right moment.

 

The Luxury of Time

 

All wine ages in two ways: aerobically (with oxygen) while it is fermenting, being pressed, racked and prepared for bottling, and anaerobically after bottling.  The myriad of subtle chemical changes that occur after bottling and away from the air are critical for developing true bouquet and flavor complexity.  This requires a certain amount of time, different from wine to wine, and allows the many different components in a given bottling to stabilize and fully integrate.  Extra bottle age at the winery contributes smoothness and the development of an infinite range of aromatic nuances in a young wine before we offer it to our customers.  Understandably, after investing so much care into creating a great bottle of Domaine Serene wine, we want to do everything possible to ensure our wines retain their exquisite quality and mature gracefully over time.  To this end, our new “DSGC” program (Domaine Serene Guaranteed Cork) reflects the Evenstads’ commitment a zero-tolerance policy on cork taint, beginning with the 2014 vintage.  A clean natural cork allows just the right amount of oxygen to slowly pass into the bottle over time, softening tannins gently and continually adding complexity throughout many years of bottle aging.

 

Winemaking Team

 

Domaine Serene utilizes a collaborative and talented team of winemakers and executives, lead by Domaine Serene Founders, Grace and Ken Evenstad.  Diversity and breadth of experience are key factors that characterize and differentiate the Domaine Serene winemaking team.  While great wines begin with great vineyards, no detail is left unexplored throughout the winemaking process in order to enhance quality potential.  An artful approach to blending world-class components is at the center of the Domaine Serene winemaking philosophy.  The blending process can take up to a year as blends are conceptualized, built and continually re-evaluated.  This meticulous process is essential to ensure that the right components are chosen in the ideal proportions to maximize complexity and consistency vintage to vintage.  Each blend is finally evaluated blind by Grace and Ken Evenstad and the winemakers to eliminate bias from the final selection of the blend, ensuring that quality always prevails.

 

Domaine Serene Guaranteed Cork

 

Most industry experts agree that about five per cent of all wines sealed with natural cork closures display a musty taint.  These wines are typically characterized as “corked.”  Domaine Serene has developed a zero-tolerance policy against TCA and other forms of cork taint, beginning with the 2014 vintage.  Our DSGC assurance guarantees taint-free natural cork closures to our customers, regardless of where or when the wine is consumed.  Already applauded by wine critics like Harvey Steiman of the Wine Spectator, DSGC is another example of unwavering quality commitment by winery founders Grace and Ken Evenstad, who envision the program as an outright refusal to tolerate corked wine under their Domaine Serene and Château de la Crée labels going forward.

 

 

Domaine Serene

 

An American Dream

 

Grace and Ken Evenstad first arrived and settled in the Dundee Hills in the Willamette Valley in 1989.  At that time, the couple had spent over 20 years together in Minnesota building a successful business, a loving family, and a deep appreciation for the wines of Burgundy.  The Evenstads had faith in Oregon early on, before there was a national market for domestic Pinot Noir.  When the time came to pursue their longtime dream of growing and producing world-class Pinot Noir, they invested in a 42-acre hilltop estate that had just been logged in the beautiful Dundee Hills of Oregon.  With the support of their family - and to the surprise of many of their friends in Minnesota – the Evenstads established Domaine Serene, effectively creating Oregon’s luxury wine industry.  They named the winery after their daughter, Serene, and their first vineyard on the estate was named after their son, Mark Bradford Evenstad.

 

Today, Domaine Serene produces wines from six individual vineyard estates, planted exclusively to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.  Each estate offers a diversity of soils, clones, rootstocks, microclimates, slopes and elevations that add distinguishing complexity and elegance to the wines.

 

In 2001, the Evenstads completed construction of their current state-of-the-art, five-level, gravity flow Pinot Noir winery.  This past Spring, they completed a new white winery dedicated to the production of Chardonnay and Sparkling wine, the first of its kind in Oregon.  Domaine Serene will debut their new Sparkling Wine later this year.  The wineries, located on the prestigious Winery Hill Estate, were built as a statement to the quality of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay that can be produced from the world-class Dundee Hills AVA.

 

Since the first vintage in 1990, Domaine Serene has produced award-winning wines, including Evenstad Reserve Pinot Noir, recognized as the World’s #3 Wine of 2013 by Wine Spectator Magazine.  In addition, the 2012 Winery Hill Vineyard Pinot Noir was named the Top Pinot Noir in the World by Decanter magazine in 2016 and the 2014 Evenstad Reserve Chardonnay received 95 points and was ranked the #2 wine in the world on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of the Year.  This made Domaine Serene the only winery in the world to receive a Top 3 rating in Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of the Year for both Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.  In 2017, the 2013 Jerusalem Hill Pinot Noir was awarded the Top American Pinot Noir at the Decanter World Wine Awards.  Through the continuous pursuit of quality and innovation, Domaine Serene has garnered global recognition as an iconic quality leader of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

 

In April 2015, the Evenstads expanded upon their original vision of producing world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay by purchasing Château de la Crée, a Burgundy wine estate in the Côte d’Or.  Burgundy vintners have been buying vineyards in Oregon for years, but now the Evenstads have flipped the trend.  “Owning and farming legendary vineyards in Burgundy is a dream come true for us,” says Ken Evenstad.  “We have a once in a lifetime opportunity to make our own wines from famous vineyards like Morgeot in Chassagne-Montrachet, Clos des Angles in Volnay, and La Garenne in Puligny-Montrachet where world-class wines have been made for centuries.”  This latest endeavor brings Grace and Ken a new opportunity to further develop their expertise with their favorite varietals and to “discover” a new terroir from the place that inspired their winemaking pursuit over 30 years ago.

 

For the past 30 years, Domaine Serene, under the guidance of the Evenstads, has been focused on excellence in a never-ending quest to produce world-class Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.  Their mission is to produce outstanding quality through continuous improvement and a commitment to extremely high internal standards.  Domaine Serene’s wines represent the achievement that is possible in Oregon, one of the finest regions in the world for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

 

 

Rated 93 Points by Wine Enthusiast 

 

Orchard fruit meets the tropics here, with apricots duking it out with passion fruit for aromatic supremacy.  I also enjoyed the wine's floral and spicy mix of plumeria and gardenia.  The flavors are a wall of lemon, with lemon bars and lemon balm tea holding court, joined by a bit of saline.  Lively acidity is a bonus.  Michael Alberty