93pts Vinous
The 2022 Pinot Noir Sojeau is darkly floral and exotic as crushed ashen stones and dried roses come together with hints of tangerine and red currants. Seamlessly silky yet also decidedly savory in style, this quickly builds tension as a wave of mineral-drenched wild berry fruits saturates, leaving a resonance of licorice toward the close. The 2022 finishes long and potent with a lingering primary concentration, neatly framed by silty tannins that add youthful poise without slowing the wine’s momentum. Drinking Window: 2025 - 2032 - By Eric Guido on May 2024

Our Tasting Note: Medium ruby in the glass. Beautifully aromatic, revealing layers of red cherry, wild raspberry, blood orange, and rose petal, complemented by delicate notes of forest floor, dried herbs, and savory spice. The palate is medium to medium-plus in body, with a seamless, silky texture and refined, polished tannins. Bright acidity brings freshness and energy to the concentrated core of red fruit, while subtle mineral and earthy nuances add depth and complexity. Graceful and impeccably balanced, it finishes long and persistent, leaving lingering impressions of vibrant fruit, savory spice, and exceptional elegance.

Vinous, Eric Guido on May 2024: The 2022s from Will Hamilton at Violin show just how special this vintage can be from the right sources and in the right hands. In this case, fruit sourced from vineyards that avoided any damage from the spring frost. Together with lower yields and picking earlier for freshness, 2022 resulted in a savory set of well-structured and complex wines. Hamilton didn’t have to contend with secondary buds due to frost, or the issue of overabundance that plagued some wineries; he had all of his fruit in before the threat of rain during harvest. This was a truly satisfying portfolio to taste through. The use of new oak is minimal. Balance and purity are front and center, while alcohol levels hover in the 12.5-13% range for Chardonnay and the low 13% range for Pinot Noir. “Wine should be delicious, first and foremost. I want to find purity, and I’m not a fan of new oak,” Hamilton explains. He points out that “Two thousand twenty-two wasn’t a frost year for us. It was just a really late vintage. Late budding, late flowering and late harvest.” Personally, I can’t recommend Violin highly enough. The single-vineyard wines are fantastic, but don’t pass up the chance to taste the Polk County Cuvée, a Pinot Noir that blends fruit from Temperance Hill, Witness Tree, Justice and Sojeau Vineyards with vines that average 25 years old.

Winery: 

Our two acres of Sojeau offered a more generous yield than in 2021, benefiting from the late bloom in warmer summer-like weather and bringing us 17 full barrels of Pinot noir.  While also supporting the Willamette Valley and Polk County cuvées, we select the purist blend from only six barrels to craft this sixth vineyard designate from the site.  All three clones were picked together on October 6th, the latest harvest since 2017, using around 10% of the total as whole clusters in two open top fermenters.  Chemistry in juice was nothing short of textbook, with acid and sugar balance in perfect check.  Sojeau saw 18 days on skins with only four movements of the cap, relying instead on daily pump-over for most of our fermentation management.  The aromatic zest of Sojeau during this process continues to make us giddy after more than a decade vinifying the site, and the wines’ ability to “behave” is a remarkable and consistent bonus.  After more than 14 months, the six barrels, including one new, were blended to tank to rest for a further six weeks before bottling in late January.

Incredible aromatic lift with a big hit of red fruits and flowers, the “Sojeauness” in full flow.  So pleasing from the glass, alluring berry fruits against the savory, almost sea-salty marine backdrop—immediately expressive and powerful.  Graceful on the front, avoiding mid palate fat of any sort, moving effortlessly across and beyond the palate.  We consistently define Sojeau as having an “arc” in terms of its textural persistence.  The 2022 reflects this deft movement in the most elegant and understated way, despite maintaining a quite captivating friendliness and elegance from back to front.