2012 Pinot Noir Wadenswil

Danielle and Laurent Montalieu, who bought this 200-acre estate in 2007 (it was founded in 1971), have built a large and impressively efficient new winery in McMinnville, in which they are producing roughly 2,500 cases from the property's 100 acres of vines, with some of the fruit going to their Solena project and selling off the rest. The emphasis here is on clonal selection and on "emphasizing the differences that specific clones can express from a single vineyard," as Laurent told me. His winemaking resumé in Oregon, where he has been making wine since 1988, is formidable, as is his knowledge of the vineyards of Willamette Valley, given the fact that he has spent "a lot of time in most of them, it seems like" since he arrived at WillaKenzie in 1995.