Review: Wines of North Valley Vineyards, 2026 Releases
I recently had the opportunity to meet James Cahill, winemaker at North Valley Vineyards, now in his 30th harvest there in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The fellow University of Texas graduate is one of the most down-to-earth people I’ve met in this business, and over an hour of Zoom we tasted through six of his winery’s most recent releases — two chardonnay and four pinot noir offerings.
Thoughts on everything tasted follow.
2024 North Valley Classic Chardonnay – North Valley’s entry-level white, with less than 20% aged in new oak. Refreshing and clean, it features a big green apple attack, laced through with a layer of lemon curd. Gentle florals build midway through the sip, the wine culminating in a mild, slightly creamy finish. My advice is to remove from refrigeration for 20 minutes before opening for best results. A / $35
2024 North Valley Reserve Chardonnay Gran Moraine Vineyard – Gran Moraine is a large vineyard about 15 years old. This wine is aged entirely in French oak. A wildly different experience, this wine immediately showcases a much more more perfumed construction than the Classic, with a heavy floral tone that speaks to honeysuckle and rose notes. The perfume is almost overpowering at times, its lemon and grapefruit notes complementary but ultimately secondary in importance. More elegant, but less crushable. A- / $50
2024 North Valley Classic Pinot Noir – This entry-level pinot is denser than expected, with quite a bit of dark fruit, heavy with cherry and blackberry notes. Quite grippy around the sides of the mouth, the wine is ringed with anise and some tarry notes, before retreating back to fruit-forward overtones. Time in glass is quite helpful with this wine, which brightens up after it has a chance to breathe and which puts cherry and raspberry notes more in the forefront. A definitive by-the-glass pinot. B+ / $35
2024 North Valley Reserve Pinot Noir – Note this isn’t a single-vineyard wine like the Reserve Chardonnay (stay tuned for those). The wine has a lot of family resemblance to the Classic Pinot Noir, but it’s actually a bit softer, with more rounded and luscious edges. It also showcases more of a blueberry character, with measured notes of chocolate and, to a lesser degree, anise. A tangly spray of mint gives the finish some bite, turning almost peppery if you let it linger — as you should. A- / $50
2023 North Valley Pinot Noir North Valley Estate Vineyard – From a single vineyard adjacent to the well-known Penner-Ash vineyards. Bright and pretty, with fresh fruit — Cahill calls it Nebbiolo-like — the anise here runs to licorice candy, not herbs. From there, the focus turns to fruit: cherries nod at raisins, blackberry nods at both rhubarb and prune. That may seem to imply some level of jamminess, but while the wine is lush with fruit, it is never blown out by it. Rather, a mix of baking spice and, surprisingly, some iron-laden elements inevitably take the wine in a whole new direction. My favorite wine of the lineup. A / $75
2023 North Valley Pinot Noir Aegrina Vineyard – To wrap things up, here’s a much different wine, heavily layered with turned earth, tobacco, and leather on the nose. Things evolve on the palate, however, where the wine reveals brighter and riper notes, with more citrus peel and a cleaner, lavender-fueled finish. Ample acidity throughout. Ultimately the wine lands in more of a Burgundian style, but unlike the other wines in this collection, this one feels unready at the moment, those beefy elements persisting. A couple years in the cellar might help it commit to a lane. A- / $65
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