The 2015 Pinot Noir Coury is pale to medium ruby in color with a nose of dried rose petals and potpourri with nuances of dried red cherries, cranberries and autumn leaves. Light to medium-bodied, it has a good concentration of red fruits in the mouth with lots of earthy accents, grainy tannins and juicy acidity, finishing long and minerally. 150 cases produced.

The 2014 Pinot Noir Coury includes around 20% whole cluster fruit, matured in 44% new French for eight months. It was unexpectedly taciturn on the nose despite coaxing, just faint scents of briary and forest floor notes merging with faint black fruit. The palate is medium-bodied with grainy tannin, crisp acidity, nicely balanced with satisfying finesse on the saline finish. This is one of the best recent releases from Hyland Estate and it should age with style.

From Coury clones planted in 1971, the 2012 Pinot Noir Coury is matured in about 60% new oak, although that is neatly disguised within the brambly red berry fruit on the nose. The palate is medium-bodied with supple, fleshy red berry fruit with shades of brown spices, and a structured but satisfying finish. Give this more masculine Pinot Noir a year in bottle and it should turn into pleasing Pinot Noir.

Issuing from some of the estate’s oldest vines, the Hyland 2011 Pinot Noir Coury leads with scents of high-toned kirsch distillate and pistachio extract, nutmeg and toasted almond, which in turn inflect a fundamentally juicy, vibrant, silken palate of fresh cherry and red currant. Although this wine received nearly half new oak and the corresponding “regular” bottling of Hyland Pinot only a quarter, the wood element is not only better-integrated here; moreover, there is no dearth of primary juiciness all the way to a long finish tinged with cherry stone, leather, blond tobacco, and saliva-inducing salinity. (I did not taste a separate “Founder’s Selection” Hyland Pinot from this vintage, although such a bottling is typically rendered for members of the winery’s club.) The Hyland estate perched on high hills south of McMinnville – about which I wrote additionally in issue 202 –is one of Oregon’s oldest, dating back to 1971, and with extensive plantings of Pommard, Wadenswil and Coury selections of Pinot Noir that date to the late ‘70s. In 2007 – in partnership with John Niemeyer – the property was acquired by Danielle Andrus Montalieu and Laurent Montalieu, who also make wine under the Solena label and from their own Danielle Laurent Vineyard east of Yamhill, and who are estate-bottling a significant portion of the Hyland fruit. (Some is also bottled under the Solena label, and reviewed in this report where you can also read about a Hyland-dedicated Erath bottling and one from Winderlea in which the site shares double-bill.) Montalieu and his Solena right hand Bruno Corneaux routinely employ multiple modes of vinification and lengths of elevage for different component lots of Pinot. The 2011 fruit was chaptalized to reach finished alcohol percentages from the low to (surprisingly) upper 13s. (Note that these wines are now labeled with the McMinnville rather than the wider Willamette A.V.A .) Tel. (503) 554-4200

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