Rose & Arrow Estate 2022: Tasting Notes from a Night with Felipe Ramirez at Nashville Wine Storage

               Over the 2 years working in the facility, I witnessed Nashville Wine Storage becoming a major location for West Coast wineries to host tasting events in Nashville. Though formats and scales vary among wineries, the carefully planned tasting events aim to showcase the wineries’ aesthetics and winemaking philosophies. Among all the exceptional events, the Rose & Arrow Estate and Atomique³ tastings on February 19th and 20th were among the most memorable ones for me: the 2022 line-up of their single vineyards perfectly exemplifies some of the best terroirs in Willamette Valley, and the bottle of 2022 Stonecreek, in my humble opinion and tasting experiences, is the greatest ever pinot noir produced in the United States. As the coordinator and participant of the first night’s tasting, I will be sharing some of the most cherished memories and highlights of the night.

Winelist of the Night:

2021 Atomique³ Le Basalt Chardonnay

Eola-Amity Hills AVA

2022 Eola Springs Chardonnay

Eola-Amity Hills AVA

2022 Hopewell Hills Pinot Noir

Eola-Amity Hills AVA

2022 Gathered Stones Pinot Noir

Eola-Amity Hills AVA

2022 Highland Close Pinot Noir

Chehalem Mountains AVA

2022 Riverline Pinot Noir

Chehalem Mountains AVA

2022 Stonecreek Pinot Noir

Eola-Amity Hills AVA

The Preparation and Background

               Before meeting all the guests and the winemaker Felipe Ramirez, the first thing I did when I started preparing was this winelist. It was planned ahead by the winery team and Felipe himself. It seems to be a reasonably organized winelist for the guests: two whites to start, followed by the single vineyard pinot noirs, and ending with the most premium one (black label). What I did not expect was that after meeting Felipe, he confirmed the order on the winelist would be the order for the tasting, except for the Atomique Chardonnay: he wished it to be placed at the end of the tasting. I didn’t understand it quite much, but I did what he asked. It ended up being one of the two highlight moments of the night.

               As the vintages were fairly new, wines were opened 1.5 hours before the tasting started. Whites were slightly chilled, and reds are served a little above cellar temperature. All red bottles were double-decanted except for the Stonecreek, which stayed in the decanter till it was served at the end of the night. The tasting is paired with a 7-course dinner by Chef Mark Daemon.

The Tasting and Conversations

                Before everybody sat down for the tasting, a bottle of 2019 Eola Springs Chardonnay from our cellar was served as an opener for the night. It was the first vintage of Rose & Arrow, producing experimental runs of Chardonnay from Eola Springs Vineyard, so the overall production was minuscule. The winery did not keep any of them, and the bottle that was opened was one of the last two bottles that we own. Being a unicorn of the kind, the wine was unfortunately overchilled and did not express too many flavors. What impressed me was the totality of the wine: acidity and body integrated very well during the aging, and the overall expression was very elegant.

               The tasting starts with an introduction of Rose & Arrow Winery, which I will not fully recap right here since they are all open information. However, I do want to point out that the Rose & Arrow Winery is a collaborative project between Mark Tarlov, a Hollywood film producer who started Evening Land, and Louis-Michel Comte Liger-Belair, who owns the eponymous prestigious domaine in Burgundy. The involvement of Louis-Michel brings in the terroir master Pedro Parra and winemaker Felipe Ramirez, who worked in Domaine Comte Liger-Belair. I am not suggesting that they are producing at the same exact level as their La Romanee, but we can certainly expect the team from one of the best Burgundy domaines to strive for a higher standard. The following conversation will be a lot of back-and-forth comparing Rose and Arrow’s wines to Burgundy’s, as I knew that Felipe and I shared the same knowledge base on the latter. 

               The first wine in the formal tasting is the 2022 Rose & Arrow Estate Eola Springs. It is clear to me at the first sip that their winemaking philosophy values balance, transparency, and delicacy. There was a moderate amount of citrus and stone fruits on both nose and palate, nothing too heavy on the oak barrel side, and a mineral yet smooth finish. At a very young age, it was not very expressive, but I can expect it to age as the 2019 vintage did and to acquire more depth and concentration in flavors along the way. 

               The conversation continues with Felipe’s introduction and analysis of the 2022 vintage. 2022 was a vintage with surprises and challenges. Starting with a late and cold spring, the whole Willamette Valley suffered from serious frost problems in mid-April—a rare incident that has not happened to the region since 1985. A lot of the local wineries were hit unprepared. Rose and Arrow, as the whole team has abundant experience in Burgundy’s frost during early growing seasons, prepared themselves with heat fans and candles to minimize the frost damage to the first buds. The summer that followed was long and dry, an extended growing season that led to relatively high yields. Rose and Arrow took a very balanced approach. 

               The 2022 Hopewell Hills and Gathered Stones were served side by side as a comparative pair. Stylistically, they differ markedly in their flavor notes: Hopewell Hills is more opulent on ripe dark berries and spices, and Highland Close is more linear, refined, and elegant on the red-fruit side, with higher acidity. It was to my biggest surprise that the two wines are technically from the same bigger vineyard, just two different lieu-dits. Everything else in viticulture and enology practices is the same. What majorly sets the two parcels apart is the soil composition: Hopewell Hills’ soil is richer in iron, red in color, and the Gather Stones’ soil is lower in iron content, brown and white in color. 

               Felipe made an interesting analogy to these two wines: he compares the Hopewell Hills to Vosne-Romanee, and Gathered Stone to Chambolle-Musigny. If you are familiar with Burgundy, this will probably be very straightforward. He also agreed with me on another analogy, as the same vineyard, different soil scenario has a more well-known example in Burgundy: Bonnes Mares Grand Cru. With overall soil composition being white marl with slat-and-flint top soil, the Chambolle-Musigny uphill side of Bonnes Mares has more pebbled limestone, and the Morey-Saint-Denis downhill side is red clay dominant. Domaine Roumier used to make and bottle them separately before 1988. It is a very terroir-driven choice made by Rose & Arrow to do the same: not restrained by preconceived notions of a single vineyard, but fully exemplifying the subtle difference in terroir even within one. 

               The 2022 Highland Close Pinot Noir and the 2022 Riverline Pinot Noir are served as the second duos of the night. From the Chehalem Mountains AVA, these two wines displayed a noticeably more muscular profile on the palate in general. Highland Close is on the darker side of the fruit, and Riverline is on the lighter side. Regarding the soil composition, these two vineyards are significantly more rocky than the previous duo. Felipe and I both compared them to Pommard and Volnay, respectively.

               The greatest highlight of the night looked different by its cover: the only pinot noir bottle with a black front label. It was poured separately. If we were talking about village style or certain village-level or premier-cru lieu-dits in Burgundy, when we tasted the other four pinots, now it would be time for the Grand Cru. It was very hard to describe a wine with such completeness, as it had everything you would ever expect from a Pinot Noir wine. The nose greeted me with incredible depth, layered with cedrus, forest floor with moss, and mixed fresh berries. Every flavor was presented with precision and temperance, and hinted at intensity and weight underneath. The palate unfolded with unparalleled concentration on the fruits. The body had remarkable width, and the structure was magnificent but not imposing by any means. The finish was literally endless, lingering between every two sips I took. To put it in the context of the other Rose & Arrow tasted, it embodied all the merits of the other four wines, reaching a stage of completeness and comprehensiveness. At three years old, it delivered the balance and complexity of a ten-year Burgundy Grand Cru, and the even-better part was that you could still expect the wine to improve through further aging. To conclude my praise for the 2022 Stonecreek Pinot Noir, I will cite Felipe’s words here: The Stonecreek has always been the Grand Cru equivalent to Rose & Arrow. What makes it a Grand Cru is the consistency across different vintages that always produces top-notch fruit. 

               As we all thought that the night was going to end on a high note, one wine struck the whole room with surprise, and it wasn’t even a Rose & Arrow wine. The 2021 Atomique³ Le Basalt Chardonnay literally tasted like new vintages of Domaine Roulot Meursault: loads of mineral notes, piercing green apple acidity, great structure, and a hint of buttery notes to smooth the sharp edges. It was still to my surprise hearing Felipe say that it was Jean-Marc Roulot who assisted this project with Pedro Parra and him. The Atomique project was established in memory of the late Mark Tarlov, who always wanted to make a mineral chardonnay in the Willamette Valley. While a bottle of Domaine Roulot Bourgogne may cost you up to 150$, and Meursault averaged at 300$, the Atomique³ Le Basalt Chardonnay seemed to be a no-brainer for me, if you are not a label drinker per se.

Conclusion

               A night like this is always memorable and emotional, and it is hard to conclude an offering of such diversity and complexity. For Felipe and Rose & Arrow, the word terroir is never a marketing term. You can actually taste the differences in their carefully crafted wines without any prior knowledge. In my opinion, the excellence of their wine does not solely come from the terroir: the viticulture in the vineyard, the carefully controlled winemaking are imperative to the great performance.

               As Burgundy faces global warming issues and market inflation, the Willamette Valley AVA has become a more attractive destination for drinkers who love the classic Burgundy-style Pinot Noirs. Rose & Arrow, a Domaine with true Burgundian origin, is exemplary of bringing out the best of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

By: Hans Gao