95pts Vinous

Glistening ruby-red. Expansive aromas of ripe red and blue fruits, candied flowers, vanilla and baking spices; a smoky mineral flourish gains strength as the wine opens up. Coats the palate with appealing sweet boysenberry and cherry liqueur flavors that tighten up and become spicier on the back half. Shows fine clarity and floral lift on a long, velvety finish shaped by fine grained, even tannins.

91pts Wine & Spirits

This leads with a pretty alpine-meadow scent, light and a bit smoky, before surprising you with its intensity: Its heady blue fruit carries a firm, spicy Luxardo-cherry opulence. Decant this for duck.

Winemaker Notes

Aromas of black cherry, pine resin, and black currants dominate, with hints of cooking chocolate and cinnamon in the background. Flavors of black berries and dark chocolate play over the sinewy, taut structure of this wine with its mineral laden acidity and fine-grained tannins.

The dark brooding nature of the vintage is unmistakable. Not since 2008 have we seen wines with the early exuberance of fruit that one expects from a warm vintage, combined with such a lean muscular structure of tannin and acid promising significant ageability.

Vintage Notes

2018 was the sixth vintage in a row defined by heat in the Willamette Valley. Following a wet winter, the spring and summer were very dry and warm, leading to the first signs of veraison in early August. Fortunately our reliable marine winds kept night-time temperatures cool, preserving acidity in the fruit as it ripened, and welcome rain events in September carried the vines through the final ripening period. The very dry hot summer made for small clusters with very small berries that in many ways defined our 2018 wines.

The wines are significantly darker than is typical at Bethel Heights, with increased potential for tannin.

Vineyard Notes

The Casteel Pinot Noir is a blend of the best barrels from Bethel Heights vineyard, selected to express the epitome of that particular vintage at Bethel Heights. This is our only Pinot noir that carries our family name rather than a place name, which gives us considerable poetic license to select our favorite barrels from each vintage.

Bethel Heights Vineyard and Justice Vineyard achieved Organic certification in 2021, Hope Well Vineyard in 2015. Beyond organic, all three estate vineyards are committed to continual reduction of off-farm inputs and continual reduction of energy and water consumption. We maintain a permanent green cover in the vine rows to build healthy soils, to sequester carbon, to mitigate erosion, to retain moisture, and to promote maximum biodiversity.

Organic