The 2015 Pinot Noir Prince Hill Vineyard is pale to medium ruby-purple in color with a soft, delicate nose of potpourri and dried rose petals over cranberry sauce, raspberry jam and charcuterie. Medium-bodied, it offers beautiful strawberry and raspberry jam notes in the mouth with wonderful savory/meaty touches, a great frame of fine-grained tannins and juicy, mouthwatering acidity, finishing long and packed with sweet fruit. 895 cases produced.

The 2012 Pinot Noir Prince Hill Vineyard comes from Pommard, 115 and 777 clones, picked October 9-13 and aged for 12 months in 40% new French oak. It has a well-defined and focused bouquet with slightly darker fruit than the Leland Pinot Noir: blackberry, damp tobacco, raspberry and wild mushroom aromas. The palate is medium-bodied with fleshy ripe tannin, well-judged acidity and a piquant finish. There is good substance here and it will benefit from another 12-18 months in bottle.

A juicy, tart-edged melange of cranberry, red currant and red raspberry in Erath’s 2011 Pinot Noir Prince Hill picks up saliva-inducing savor from shrimp shell reduction and veal stock, the salinity present on a firm, bright, and buoyant palate translating into a real finishing tang that dovetails perfectly with the incisive invigoration of berry seed crunching. I suspect that this archetypical 2011 and poster child for Erath’s flagship site and its Worden Hill Rd. neighborhood will perform admirably through at least 2020. Veteran vintner Gary Horner showed me a significant share of 2011 vintage releases from Erath, though I did not have time to taste by any means all (and we focused exclusively on Pinots). He opined that higher-elevation sites – even though cooler – seemed to him favored in 2011, presumably on account of the important role played by wind in concentrating flavors everywhere in the Willamette in October of that year. And wind was certainly critical in helping counteract what Horner claims were two of the toughest challenges of this vintage: rot, especially that hidden – along with pink berries – inside clusters; and clusters themselves so heavy that as he quipped “even at one to a shoot, your vines were sometime over-cropped!” Virtually all of the 2011 Pinots here are around 12.5% in finished alcohol, and that’s even after selective chaptalization. An elevage of 11-12 months in 35-45% new barrels is pretty much the routine for Erath Pinot. (For more about this historic winery; its vineyards; and Horner’s approach, consult my issue 202 introduction.) Tel. (503) 538-3318

Representing a selection from among numerous parcels and lots that differ each year, the 2010 Pinot Noir Prince Hill features strawberry and cranberry, black tea and bay laurel in a tart, smoky, piquant performance that lacks focus or length to measure up to the standard set by the more successful single-site bottlings I tasted from Erath this vintage. It will certainly be worth revisiting though, and is unlikely to fatigue for at least another half dozen years. Dick Erath realized his first crop (all of 200 cases) in 1972 from vines he planted in 1969 after moving his family north from California. When he approached his new neighbor Jim Maresh about the prospects for wine growing along Worden Hill Road west of Dundee, the latter (85 years old today and still farming) says he sized Erath up as some hippy peddling a dream, but seeing as Maresh was sitting on 200 tons of unsold prunes, he figured he had little to lose by acting on Erath’s intuitions, and in went vines that would become one of North America’s great viticultural treasures. Within a decade, Erath had reached 10,000 cases; then took only four further vintages to triple his output, while continuing to showcase fruit from his Dundee Hills neighborhood. Since then – and since Erath sold his eponymous winery to Ste. Michelle Wine Estates in 2006 – production has soared to well over 100,000 cases. Pharmacist-turned-vintner Gary Horner – who took charge of winemaking responsibilities here in 2003 – remains at that post, and the Erath portfolio continues to showcase sites (now totaling 120 acres) farmed under their close supervision, including a clutch that inform single-site bottlings. (Prince Hill Vineyard, along Worden Hill Rd., is the only remaining actual Erath estate vineyard.) I tasted only a subset of the winery’s recent releases with Horner, whose approach in the cellar includes a for Oregon rare reliance on micro-oxygenation (which, along with cross-flow filtration is – a bit oddly and surely misleadingly – the only topic addressed under “Winemaking Technique” on the Erath website). Other distinctive features of vinification here include there being only a brief cold soak, and a portion of most Pinots being fermented in closed tanks. No musts have been acidulated since 2006. “All Pinots are treated virtually identically,” Horner explains, so as to be able to focus as a winemaking team on the characteristics particular to each site. Summing up his intentions, he told me “I’m trying to keep our style, but turn up the volume.” Tel. (503) 538-3318

The 2009 Pinot Noir Prince Hill exhibits aromas of cedar, underbrush, spice box, cherry, and boysenberry. In the glass it opens to reveal a velvety texture, succulent flavors, and a sense of elegance. Nicely balanced, concentrated, and lengthy, it will provide pleasure from 2012 to 2019. Erath is once again a name to be reckoned with in the Willamette Valley wine scene as the investment by the Chateau Ste. Michelle Wine Group is starting to pay dividends. Tel. (800) 456-6789; www.erath.com