Our hunt for pitch-perfect Pinot to stock your cellar with never ends, and with it comes a few definitive criteria. The ideal Pinot should be silky but not flabby, fruit-driven yet earthy, delicious enough to drink on its own but with the complexity to serve alongside a special occasion dinner. It should essentially be a vinous jack of all trades, and it’s got to be positively loaded with value. Enter Trisaetum’s 2022 Pinot Noir. With its dark, spice-laden fruit, its velvety texture, here’s a bottle that clearly demonstrates why the Willamette Valley has vaulted into the Pinot world’s upper echelon. It ticks every box even the most stringent Burgundian could conceive – organically farmed, spontaneously fermented, aged the old school way in a soaring underground cave. Yet it doesn’t even cost forty dollars. Trisaetum perfectly toes the line between dead serious and positively joyful, the sort of bottle we want to have on hand at all times. Follow our lead and grab enough to make sure that’s the case!
Trisaetum founder Jason Frey got into winemaking the old-fashioned way: By growing grapes and making wine at home. Originally from Orange County, California, Jason tended to a small plot of Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah in his backyard when the winemaking bug bit him. In 2003, he and his wife Andrea Lassa found a steep, rock-strewn site outside of McMinnville in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. They purchased the land and planted Pinot Noir and Riesling. The project has increased in scope and scale since then–Jason and Andrea have purchased another 25 acres across two vineyards, built a gravity flow winery, opened a tasting-room-cum-art-galley–but it remains a family-focused project. Indeed, “Trisaetum” is itself a portmanteau of Jason and Lynn’s two children’s names (Tristan and Tatum).
Trisaetum’s Willamette Valley Pinot Noir is a blend of the family’s three estate vineyards. Through the three sites, they capture all of the major soil types of the region, from loamy Willakenzie to volcanic Jory. And farming takes place with the utmost care, the vines never seeing irrigation and very little, if any, tillage. Trisaetum has planted wildflowers around all of their vineyards to encourage larger bee populations, and even the leftover skins and seeds from winemaking find their way back into the soil as compost. No less exactitude is shown in the cellar, where winemaking is simple, but precise. Pinot Noir arrives, gets chilled down, and then gets sorted no less than six times. It ferments in large oak vats, and then gets transferred to barrels in the cave below, by gravity. This is old-school winemaking refined to its highest potential through modern attention to detail, and the results are stunning.
If you’re able, definitely serve Trisaetum’s 2022 Pinot Noir in full-size Burgundy bowls so as to really appreciate the full aromatic scope on display here. It pours a limpid ruby with purple highlights, the nose leaping forth with a riot of red and purple fruits: ripe raspberries, cherry liqueur, crushed blackberry, redcurrants, and plump strawberry. There’s a fine streak of freshly dug, loamy earth and classic Pinot mushroom notes, atop which ride faint cedar and warm baking spices. The palate is lush, velvety, but kept very refreshing by a judicious wick of acidity and some very fine grained tannin. This bottle of Trisaetum positively explodes with pleasure right now, and it’ll continue to develop for a few years yet in your cellar. Keep enough on hand to pop whenever the mood strikes!
