Weber Vineyard

Weber Vineyard was established in 1978 by Art Weber. Along with several other vineyards on Worden Hill Rd. at that time created perhaps the most striking and unique viticulture micro-climate in Northern Oregon. Weber Vineyard was purchased by longtime vineyard manager Andy Humphrey in 2001. Patricia Green Cellars began sourcing fruit from the vineyard in 2005. In 2013 a portion of the vineyard was sold to a different winery along with the naming rights to the Ana Vineyard brand. While Patricia Green Cellars still sources fruit from the same sections of the vineyard since the beginning of the relationship, the wines labeled as Ana Vineyard from 2005-2012 are now called by their historical name of Weber Vineyard beginning with the 2013 vintage.

While David Lett established his original vines on Breyman Orchards Rd. in the Dundee Hills in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the upper end of Worden Hill Rd. quickly became a gathering place for people who were establishing sites that would in many ways become to the defining vineyards of the region. Art and Vivian Weber were one of those couples, originally establishing their site in 1976. This beautiful and amazing site sits on a unique geological formation on the hillside. This vineyard rolls down into a fold in the hillside that protects it in a way that mitigates the southern facing nature it has. Vineyard manager Andy Humphrey has said geologists have told him that given the way the Worden Hill Rd. hillside is shaped and the way the topography was formed it would have been extremely unlikely for the particular “bulge” that this vineyard sits upon ever would have formed.

It often feels that way in there, as if something a little cosmic is kind of going on that you can neither quantify nor truly explain particularly well without sounding a little bit, well a little bit like Andy Humphrey. That’s good. Oregon vineyards at their best have some element of oddity and mystery to them. This one has that in particular. The steep angles and the fact it is somewhat enclosed by a bowl of hills around it combined with the relatively decent elevation this makes for one of our later and sometimes latest picked vineyard each vintage. Our vines come from a 1983 planting and the fruit produces intensely Dundee Hill-styled Pinots with great red fruit character, minerality and a satin-like texture that leads into complex tannin chains making for complex wines even at relatively young ages. This is a thoughtful wine most vintages. The spiced characteristics Dundee Hill Pinots can show really let loose in this bottling and there can be a jumble of things going on here that take time to work themselves out, either as the bottle opens up for a few hours or as the wine develops its footing over years in a cellar.