The 2017 Pinot Meunier offers bright red and black berry fruit on the nose with pleasantly rustic accents of leather, dusty earth and dried herbs. The palate is light-bodied, soft and juicy with earth-laced fruits and a bright, spicy finish. Yum!

I adore Jason Lett's Meunier, and this 2016 version is delicious. Medium ruby-purple, the 2016 Pinot Meunier has a wonderful perfume of crushed boysenberry, violet, blackberries, blueberries and earth with notes of charcuterie, peppercorn, lilac and garrigue. The medium-bodied palate is silky with earth-laced fruits, a grainy frame and long, refreshing finish.

From Pinot Meunier vines planted in the Daphne vineyard in 1979, the 2015 Pinot Meunier is pale to medium ruby-purple in color with a nose of warm raspberry and strawberry jam, baked cranberries, blueberry, red and blue flowers and touches of prosciutto. Light to medium-bodied, it’s wonderfully fresh with pure flavors of warm red and blue fruits and cascades of flowers in the mouth. It’s so, so juicy and mouthwatering, with fine, grainy tannins and savory touches coming through on the very long finish. This puts most Beaujolais to shame. 100 cases were produced. This will be the last vintage of the Pinot Meunier made exclusively with old vines—beginning in 2016, some fruit from young vines will be included.

Eyrie Vineyards has been making Pinot Meunier since 1970, from vineyards planted in 1965 and 1979. Pale ruby in color, the 2014 Pinot Meunier has a nose of red currants and Bing cherries with hints of dried herbs, forest floor and damp soil. Light-bodied, with plenty of bright, crunchy red berry flavors, it has a lively backbone and great length.

Tart sour cherry and dried cranberry mingled with black pepper, lemon zest inform Eyrie's spare but bright, zingy 2010 Pinot Meunier, whose finishing hints of cherry pit bitterness and salinity happily combine for some invigoration and saliva-inducement. This relatively austere, nervous, but persistently juicy libation might well gain depth and in a good sense settle down over the next few years in bottle. In any event, I would not be surprised given this estate's track record if it kept decently for the better part of a decade. Still located at the abattoir-turned-winery in McMinnville in which pioneer David Lett vinified his first, 1970 crop - and, with remarkably few exceptions, still utilizing antique, if refurbished equipment - Eyrie is today under the direction of his son Jason, who after training in ecology as well as oenology and experiencing a protracted off-again, on-again association with his family's winery (including a decade in New Mexico as a research ecologist and a period establishing his own winemaking reputation at Bishop Creek), returned to Eyrie to direct operations in close collaboration with his father during the latter's last three seasons. In addition to the recently expanded original vineyard site first planed in 1966 - which I toured with manager Jeremy Saville (formerly Jason Lett's assistant when he directed Bishop Creek) - Stonehenge and Daphne are located to the north, high up in the Dundee Hills just above Domaine Serene's Winery Hill; in between is Rolling Green Farm; and Three Sisters is also not far away, off to the east of Archery Summit at the edge of the Dundee Hills A.V.A., all of these microclimatically diverse satellite sites - ungrafted, continuously farmed without drip lines and organically - having been first planted within a decade beginning in 1979 and thus unsurprisingly favoring the same Pommard, Mariafeld and Wadenswil Pinot selections that had already by then established this estate's reputation. Tiny lots and - in the late stages of fermentation - gentle but still frequent punch-downs are among the continued norms at Eyrie Pinot; a preference (with reds) for spontaneous - and hence, generally much slower - fermentation as well as a bit of experimentation with whole clusters and stems represent recent innovations. Barrels are still being renewed at the glacial pace set by "Papa" Lett, and interestingly, Jason now favors entirely those from Rick DeFerrari's nearby Oregon Barrel Works (whose products at least season the mix in a number of other prominent Willamette cellars). Late release, that rarity in the wine world at large, remains routine here, despite which - not to mention despite this estate's renown - prices remain for the most part amazingly reasonable. Tel. (503) 472-6315