Arterberry Maresh - Dundee, Oregon
YO, WINE LOVERS:
DON'T MISS THIS OREGON PINOT NOIR!
While we love what we do and the wines we choose to support, we generally try to refrain from affixing qualifiers such as "the best" to particular wines (outside the likes of great bottles from Chave or Raveneau or Conterno). Every now and then though, we have to tell it like it is.
Back in 2014, we most unusually, sent two messages on wines from Jim Maresh, winemaker/owner at Dundee's archetypal Arterberry-Maresh winery - aka the red barn in addition to our notes about a wonderful visit we had with Jim when we brought Mathieu Deiss, of Alsace's legendary Domaine Marcel Deiss, to Jim's winery while Mathieu was the guest of honor at one of our 15th Anniversary tastings.
Three messages on the same winery in one year is unprecedented for us. Here is why... In our 20+ years, we have tasted and promoted only a handful Oregon Pinot noirs which represented the value of Jim’s 2012 Dundee Hills Pinot noir. (The 2001 Bergstrom Willamette Valley and the 2008 Evening Land Willamette Valley, for instance.)
One of Oregon's top winemaking talents, Jim Maresh ("marsh"), has the good fortune to work with (aka "own") one of Oregon's finest vineyards, Dundee's Maresh Vineyard. Mostly planted in 1970 and 1974, the smallish Maresh vineyard is a fine reference standard for Dundee Hills' Jory soil and a hallmark voice of Oregon Pinot noir.
With his family purchasing the grounds in 1959, Jim has been involved with the land and making wine from it since he was a boy in Middle School. His affinity for those Pinot noir grapes and that Dundee ground streams in his veins.
Since "officially" becoming a winemaker in 2005, Jim's winemaking and farming at Arterberry-Marsh is composed of minimal intervention. The wines begin, literally, from beneath the ground up. By tending the soil and vines through careful farming in the vineyard, Jim is more easily able to make wines without any manipulation in the winery. He is seeking, and has found, a beguiling purity of the place and its Pinot noir. You can smell this as you swirl the wine in your glass and you will taste that kind of essence sip by sip. The precious and rare old vines he works with have found the right steward for their most pure expression– an achievement often sought in wine making yet infrequently accomplished.
When in stock, wines from this producer appear below. Click on each wine for more detail.