#32 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2023
Delicate red in color. The incredibly expressive bouquet offers notes of sandalwood, herbs de Provence, and Red Delicious apples. On the palate, freshly picked red huckleberries provide tart and lasting succulence with a hint of baking spice. The sandy soils of the Chehalem Mountains offer salinity and minerality on the finish that is complemented with dark cherry and rhubarb.
Review:
Supple, richly textured and elegantly complex, this Pinot opens with a burst of fresh raspberry, then unfolds with notes of forest floor and brown baking spices, plus a touch of licorice as it builds tension toward refined tannins.
-Wine Spectator 95 Points
The first impression of this stunning red is of brilliant red raspberry fruit, as pure as a sunbeam. Yet an inky depth plays counterpoint, rumbling beneath, dark and a bit spicy, grounding the fruit with tannins from the silica-based soils of Bergström’s estate vineyard in the Chehalem Mountains. The tension between these two elements is gorgeous, the fruit saturating and full, and yet it has an energy and drive giving the texture a lifted, graceful feel.
-Wine & Spirits 95 Points
Zena Crown Vineyard The Sum Pinot Noir is made from 100 percent Pinot Noir.
Massed from multiple vineyard blocks and clones, this wine has a timeless beauty that can be inherently understood by innate human nature. Wines of this stature, much like great art, reflect the complex and compelling relationship between humanity and Earth. Expressing Autumn, S (The Sum) leads with Gala
apple, Japanese plum, gun powder, dirt, and garlic power on the nose, with barely ripe cherry on the finish. 60% whole-cluster fermentation bolsters the wine, sustaining the tannic imprint and tension that uncoils like a rattlesnake strike on the finish.
Review:
A jeweled ruby hue, the 2021 Pinot Noir The Sum takes on fantastic crystalline and pure aromas of wild strawberries, raspberries, dark stones, menthol, and cedar spice, but it’s not very oaky. Medium-bodied, it has ripe tannins, with ripe acidity and a bit more modest acidity compared to the other wines from Zena Crown, but it’s long on the palate, with a more autumnal sensibility, and it’s going to show its best over the next 12-15 years.
-Jeb Dunnuck 95 Points