BELLE PENTE

Vineyard & Winery

Current Releases

Brief descriptions of our current release wines can be found below. Please click on the image of the wine barrel (where available) to download the complete technical details for that particular wine.

2007 Willamette Valley Muscat

This is our third vintage of an Early Muscat/Muscat Ottonel blend from Stag Hollow Vineyard, and we're finally starting to get it dialed in! Pure, wild floral aromatics with a touch of honey are followed by a remarkably substantial palate given it's mere 11.3% alcohol!  A great apéritif, delicious with a spicy dish, and gentle enough to enjoy for lunch! A rare treat!

99 cases produced.

2007 Willamette Valley Pinot Gris

Fans of our Pinot Gris will find a lot to like here. As much as I loved the 2006 version, I must admit that it was a bit of a stylistic outlier. This wine represents a return to our more "normal" style.  We have always favored a richer, more opulent style of Pinot Gris, with good texture and viscosity. In this 2007 rendition, those attributes are buffered by crisp, fresh fruit and good acidity.  With this vintage, we added 2.5 acres of Pinot Gris grapes at Rivenwood vineyard, adjacent to our property.  We are farming it as an estate vineyard, so we are now growing about 2/3 of our Pinot Gris grapes.  This is a classic Oregon Pinot Gris with the usual Belle Pente "textural enhancements". Enjoy it now and over the next year or two.

  788 cases produced.

2006 Reserve Pinot Gris

Pinot Gris fans take note - this is something you don't want to miss!  In 2006, we left a portion of our oldest Pinot Gris vines "hang" for several weeks beyond the normal harvest date in hopes of making a late harvest desert wine.  Unfortunately, the grapes didn't get quite ripe enough for a "stand alone" dessert wine, but they were harvested significantly riper than the rest of our Pinot Gris - so we decided to build a Reserve bottling around them.  Our style of Pinot Gris has always been closer to Alsace than Alto Adige, and this wine takes it to another level.  Although the aromatics are rather restrained, the wine explodes on the palate with rich, ripe, viscous tropical fruit, accented by an almost smoky, briny minerality (grilled mangos at a beach barbeque?).  The residual sugar (2%) is balanced with adequate acidity. A thoroughly intriguing wine - a bit "over the top," and eminently enjoyable!

 218 cases produced.

2006 Willamette Valley Riesling

Sadly, this is the last Belle Pente Riesling that will include fruit from the 1968 planting at Chehalem Mountain Vineyard.  The vineyard ownership went through a transition and we lost access to the fruit in 2007.  The good news is that it's going out in style, contributing to what may be our finest Riesling to date. A true child of the vintage, it is softer and more opulent than last years version, with more of the peach & apricot flavors and aromas than the citrus that dominated in '05.  The 1% residual sugar is balanced by good acidity, creating a perception of concentration and ripeness rather than overt sweetness.  This wine just screams for seafood in cream sauce!

 295 cases produced.

2006 Willamette Valley Gewurztraminer

This is our third (and final) vintage from Hyland vineyard in McMinnville (we are actively seeking a new source).  The wine features a somewhat restrained floral, spicy, nose and a broad, rich palate. It strikes a wonderful balance between the hedonistic side of Gewürztraminer and it's more restrained, food friendly personality. This wine will make a wonderful accompaniment to traditional holiday meals.

145 cases produced.

2007 Belle Pente Vineyard Chardonnay

Oregon Chardonnay is our best kept secret!   Many wineries abandoned it over the past 10 years as they jumped on the Pinot Gris bandwagon, but a handful of us stubborn stalwarts persisted.  Since 2004, our Chardonnay has been 100% estate grown from our 2 acre Dijon clone vineyard planted in 1999. This vineyard sits on a steep south-west facing hillside that soaks up the afternoon sun and promotes slow, even ripening.  This 2007 version is a classically styled Chardonnay in the old world tradition.  To maintain freshness and acidity, we always harvest a portion of the vineyard early, and leave the rest to achieve riper flavors, aromas, and texture. Our standard winemaking protocol includes barrel fermentation with a very small dose of new wood, a 50/50 split between Oregon white oak and French oak, a long, cool fermentation, and sur lie aging. If you've shopped for high end California Chardonnay or good white Burgundy lately, you will quickly realize that this wine is a good value at twice the price! Enjoy now or cellar for a few years.

 343 cases produced.

2007 Cuvee Contraire - Rose-Style

Our proprietary rosé-style blend of Pinot Noir and Gamay Noir is a perennial favorite, and this 2007 version is one of the best yet!  Although traditional rosé season is still several months away, this is a remarkably versatile wine.  Try it with traditional holiday fare, or use it to solve the meal time conundrum of trying to decide between a red and a white.  Or just stock up now and be ready for summer!

144 cases produced.

2007 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir

Our "basic" Pinot from 2007 is a bit of a no-brainer.  An estate-grown Pinot from a great appellation for around 20 bucks...huh?  This is the reaction that we've heard from sommeliers and wine merchants around the country who have been blown away by the quality-to-price ratio of this wine.  A series of fortunate factors combined to make this a reality.  Our crop levels, especially in the north blocks of the vineyard, were relatively generous.  Also, it seems like many customers have been "drinking down" in these challenged economic times, creating demand for solid, enjoyable wines at lower prices. So since we "could" do it, and there was a reason that we "should" do it, we did it: a Belle Pente "economic stimulus package" Pinot Noir!  This wine packs a lot of flavor into a shyly colored, lean, mineral driven package. It builds volume in the glass and gains sweetness with air.  Compare with your favorite little Bourgogne Rouge.

872 cases produced

2007 Dundee Hills Pinot Noir

Only our second release of this wine, it is primarily the result of our "sharecropping" arrangement with Bella Vida vineyard in Dundee.  It comes from their well sited blocks of the Dijon 667, 777, and 114 clones of Pinot Noir planted in 1999 and 2000. This wine delivers a lot of Dundee Hills character at a very modest price.  Ripe red fruits explode out of the glass, grounded by a clean earthiness and a hint of baking spice.  It also showcases some of the best attributes of the 2007 vintage: fresh & bright, with good structure, great balance of acid and tannins, and alluring mid-palate sweetness. This wine compares very favorably with other Dundee Hills Pinot Noirs that cost $10+ more.

413 cases produced

2007 Yamhill-Carlton District Pinot Noir

We've produced a "generic" Yamhill-Carlton District bottling every year since the appellation was formally approved in 2003. However, in 2007 all of the grapes came from our estate vineyard (the same one that produces our Belle Pente Vineyard and Estate Reserve wines).

As in past years, a good portion of the grapes for this blend come from younger North Blocks of the vineyard.  But in 2007, we decided to add some "fruit driven" barrels from the East Blocks to this bottling.

This fresh, bright youngster is is a beautiful expression of the "kinder, gentler" side of the Yamhill-Carlton appellation.  Reminiscent of a good Cru Beaujolais, enjoy now with lighter dishes.

 445 cases produced

2007 Murto Vineyard Pinot Noir

For many of our longtime customers, Belle Pente and Murto are almost synonymous. We've bottled wine from Mike and Robin Murto's terrific Dundee Hills vineyard since our first vintage in 1996, and it's been a mainstay of our portfolio ever since.

Like the mailman, Murto always delivers, and it did not shy from the task in 2007.  Complex spicy, earthy, brambly aromas lead to a fresh, focused palate dripping with medium-ripe red fruit flavors over silky, polished tannins. An absolutely classic Dundee Hills Pinot Noir!

Although this wine has a youthful exuberance that makes it pretty attractive now, it should become even more interesting with a few years in the cellar.

645 cases produced

2007 Belle Pente Vineyard Pinot Noir

The flagship pinot from our estate vineyard always hails predominantly from the East Blocks, where the vines enjoy the benefit of the early morning sun, and are somewhat protected from the intense late afternoon heat.

As we learn more about the characteristics of individual sections of our vineyard, we are able to make small adjustments to fine-tune our blends. In this case, we included some barrels from the North blocks to provide some freshness, and the West Block to add a bit more structure. 

The result is a very expressive wine with heady aromas of dark red & blue fruits, accented by herbs and woodsmoke. The plate is focused and long, medium bodied, with good underlying structure and perfect acid/tannin balance.

This compact, elegant young wine bears some similarity to our 2005 version, starting out fresh and lean, but gaining depth and sweetness with time in the glass. Very enjoyable today, it will also flesh out nicely over the next few years.  Get some for now & later!

 567 cases produced

2006 Murto Vineyard Pinot Noir

This is the tenth year that we've made wine from the old Pommard block at Murto vineyard, which was planted in 1978.  Since it's first release, our Murto vineyard Pinot has seduced wine lovers across the country with it's clean earthiness, bright red fruit, and intriguing, unique spiciness.  It is often described by others as "sublimely Burgundian".

Warmer vintages are especially kind to higher elevation sites like Murto, allowing the grapes to attain more ripeness and concentration than in cooler years.  This was indeed the case in 2006, with perhaps the most intensely flavored fruit we've ever harvested from this site.  Although relatively high in alcohol, the wine maintains it's balance and elegance.

True to the vintage, this wine can be enjoyed now, and should be (in moderation, of course)!  But please, do yourself a favor, and buy enough to squirrel some away to enjoy four or five years from now.  The vineyard has a great track record for aging gracefully, and mature Murto Pinots are real treats!

828 cases produced.

2006 Belle Pente Vineyard Pinot Noir

The 2006 vintage was a "defining moment" for our young estate vineyard .  The 4 vineyard blocks planted in 1998, which contribute the majority of the fruit that goes into this bottling, really came into their own in 2006, producing what one of our well known neighboring winemakers described as an "archetypal" Yamhill-Carlton District Pinot Noir!

Although we started producing this wine in 2002, this is the first year that it is really living up to it's potential and delivering on the promise of our terrific site. The nose is deep and complex, with herbal notes of thyme, anise, and lavender accenting the wild black cherry and ripe blackberry aromas.  On the palate, the wine is smooth and suave, structured yet lively, and impeccably balanced.

As a "typical" 2006, this wine is immensely pleasurable now, and will reveal even more charms after a few years in the cellar. No longer merely a junior version of our Estate Reserve, this bottling has attained it's own identity and character.  Check it out!

896 cases produced.

2006 Estate Reserve Pinot Noir

It was 10 years ago that we released our first Estate Reserve Pinot Noir.    This bottling has always represented the "best of the best" from our Belle Pente estate vineyard, and over the years has also evolved into our purest expression of the best attributes of our Yamhill-Carlton District appellation. The wines from our neighborhood are characterized by dark fruit flavors and aromas, herbal/floral overtones, underlying minerality, an intriguing texture, and an impeccable balance of acid and tannin that makes the wines silky and sappy but also fresh and focused.  Our Estate Reserve Pinot Noir provides a textbook example!

2006 has been described as a very "user friendly" vintage for Pinot Noir in Oregon.  This Estate Reserve was selected for the International Pinot Noir Celebration this summer - so it can certainly be enjoyed now.  But it is destined to provide the most pleasure when pulled from the cellar a half dozen (or more) years down the road. This 2006 version once again is sourced primarily from 2 sections of the vineyard: the original 1994 planting, always the most complex wine in the cellar, and the Wadensvil block planted in 1998 on a steep south-west hillside, the warmest part of the vineyard which always achieves the most even ripening. We then selected the 18 individual barrels that best showcased our appellation attributes and provide the "right stuff" for aging.  The result is a tightly wound, rich, concentrated, structured young wine - perhaps our strongest Estate Reserve bottling to date. Make sure to find some room in your cellar!

450 cases produced.

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