Named for the Pinot selection of Willamette pioneer Charles Coury, Hyland Estates’ 2010 Pinot Noir Coury features candied and confitured cherry tinged with vanilla, cinnamon, and Virginia blond tobacco. Like the best I tasted from among Laurent Montalieu’s current crop of Pinots, it’s plush and expansive, but despite its confectionary, confitured, and torrefied aspects preserves a welcome core of primary juiciness and harbors a saliva-liberating lick of salt. Piquancy of cherry pit and smoky suggestions of peat add counterpoint to a sustained, if still rather superficially sweet finish. I would plan on drinking this over the next 3-4 years. Laurent Montalieu and Danielle Andrus Montalieu – who, among other sites, also farm their Danielle Laurent estate in Yamhill-Carlton, (whose wines are bottled under the Solena label and reviewed under that name in this report) – purchased the hundred acre Hyland vineyard near McMinnville in 2007. The plan was for the property to be sold-off in substantial blocks to generate small vanity (if potentially also serious) family-owned estates whose proprietors would reside on their vineyard land and whose wines would be made with Montalieu’s assistance. As of today, though, most of the Hyland vine acreage is still in the Montalieus’ hands and supplies their own label. Tel. (503) 554-4200