The Eyrie Vineyards The Eyrie Vineyards Pinot Noir Roland Green 2018 750ml

Roland Green includes an older plot of own-rooted vines adjacent a young block on heat-tolerant rootstocks. It yielded a wine of admirable tension and breadth in 2018. You can taste the stalwart old-vine poise in the wine today, turned soil and tanbark, blood and cherries, along with youthful savory notes of violets, rose petals, bramble and star anise. It is, in a word, complex. The flavors are luxurious, the savor tugging at the fruit with a gentle insistence, with a cherry-skin concentration to the texture that’s wildly appealing. Cellar to watch it evolve.

Among the half dozen 2018 Pinots from Eyrie this is the tightest and least immediately expressive, which suggests decanting and/or aggressive aeration prior to early drinking. It grudgingly reveals strawberry and black cherry fruit with a spine of iron. The compact flavors and inner rigidity suggest that this should be cellared and could easily improve for a decade or longer. Drink 2026 to 2035. (Paul Gregutt)