Evesham Wood, Pinot Noir

I’ve been saying it for years—usually while holding court with a glass in hand—that in good vintages the Willamette Valley in Oregon delivers the best price-to-quality Pinot Noir on Earth. People usually smile, nod, and then go back to sipping a $100 Burgundy they hope will taste as good as this. I always love pouring a wine like this blind for Burgundy lovers—because suddenly the table gets quiet, everyone trying to guess which village it might be from. Glasses lift. Eyebrows rise. And when the price and region are revealed, jaws drop. This is the kind of bottle that makes you check the label twice and the receipt three times, because Pinot Noir this good almost never lives in this price range.

I’ve been fortunate to visit Evesham Wood every few years, and walking through that front door is like stepping into a time capsule of what Oregon wine used to be. It’s a humble building, a small team, and a wall full of regional maps with enough information to overwhelm even the geekiest of sommeliers. You might taste through the lineup with a spread of French cheeses followed by a simple, old-school meal at a communal table, and for a nostalgic moment you could swear you’ve stumbled into a farmhouse in rural Burgundy. A walk downstairs into the barrel room only deepens that feeling—nothing there looks like it has changed in 40 years, and that is entirely the point.

Evesham Wood was founded in 1986 by Russ and Mary Raney, who trained and tasted extensively in Burgundy before realizing that Oregon’s cool climate and long growing season were the closest thing to a New World Côte d’Or. Russ helped shape the Willamette Valley’s identity—not just through his own wines, but as a co-founder of the Deep Roots Coalition, a group committed to dry-farming and the belief that irrigation dilutes terroir by preventing vines from digging deep for water and nutrients. Their philosophy was simple: healthy vines, honest farming, no shortcuts. That ethos hasn’t budged in nearly forty years, and it still defines the wines today.

Most of their vineyards sit in the Eola–Amity Hills AVA, one of the Willamette Valley’s most coveted sub-regions, where cold Pacific wind funnels through the Van Duzer Corridor every afternoon, slowing ripening and locking in acidity. The soils—mostly Nekia and Jory volcanic basalt—naturally restrict vigor and produce small-berried Pinot with fine tannins, bright red fruit, and an elegance more reminiscent of Chambolle than California. When Russ retired, he didn’t sell to a conglomerate—he passed the torch to Erin Nuccio, a winemaker who had already been crafting his own Haden Fig wines at the estate and shared the same minimalist, Burgundian instincts. Erin kept the formula intact: dry-farming, native yeast fermentations, minimal new oak, and harvesting based on flavor rather than lab numbers. The result remains the same: graceful, transparent, terroir-driven Pinot Noir.

The 2023 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is made exactly like Evesham Wood’s single-vineyard wines—same fermenters, same native-yeast approach, same long, gentle maceration—just sourced from a mix of dry-farmed sites across the valley (Mainly Eola-Amity-Hills), including Mahonia, Illahe, Koosah, Prophet, Jubilee, and Cortell Rose (many certified LIVE & Salmon Safe). Vine plantings range from the mid-1980s to 2016, rooted mostly in volcanic soils between 200–750 feet of elevation. Fermentation follows the estate’s signature method: a proprietary “Jayer” yeast, three days of pumpovers followed by twice-daily punchdowns, and a long 25-day maceration for full flavor and tannin integration. The wine ages 10 months in French oak, nearly all neutral, keeping the focus on purity, not wood.

2023 was an unusual but ultimately beautiful vintage—budbreak was six weeks late, but harvest still arrived on schedule in mid-September, delivering full ripeness without excess sugars. The finished wine sits at 13.0% ABV and already shows seamless balance and lift. In the glass, expect lifted floral aromatics, wild berries, goji berry, black cherry, wild flowers and faint accents of baking spice leading into delicate plum, savory fruit, and a long finish full of luscious berries and underbrush. To enjoy, briefly decant for 15–20 minutes before serving just above cellar temperature in Burgundy stems—roughly 55–65°F depending on your preference. Serving it slightly cooler will enhance the floral tones.

This wine is delicious on its own, but it is the ideal pairing for one of my favorite autumn dishes: Zuni Café roast chicken with bread salad. It takes a couple of days to dry-brine the bird with nothing more than kosher salt, but the result is one of the best roast chickens you will ever eat. It is one of San Francisco’s most iconic dishes, and this wine matches it beautifully. The 2023 Evesham Wood Pinot Noir can be cellared for 5–7 years and will evolve gracefully if kept cold and dark, but I can’t imagine it drinking much better than it does today.