Walter Scott Pinot Noir La Combe Verte 2025
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The Land
La Combe Verte means "the green valley," and it is Walter Scott's Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, the blend a Burgundian domaine would call its village wine. The fruit comes mostly from the Eola-Amity Hills, where Ken Pahlow and Erica Landon have built their reputation. In the 2024 release that meant Distraction, Sojeau, Temperance Hill and Witness Tree, plus Freedom Hill in the Coast Range foothills. The Eola-Amity sites sit on volcanic basalt clay, which runs cooler, holds water and pushes the wine toward red fruit and firm acid. Freedom Hill adds marine sedimentary soil, which drains fast and brings darker fruit and a silkier texture. The Van Duzer winds that pour through the hills every afternoon keep acidity high even in warm years.
The Wine
The Walter Scott La Combe Verte Pinot Noir 2025 follows the house method. Fruit is destemmed, fermented with ambient yeast in small lots, and mostly pumped over, with gentle punch-downs. The wine then spends about 10 months in French oak barrels, a portion of them new, before bottling. The team picks earlier than many neighbors for lower pH, which gives the wines a tight, polished frame that takes oak well. Earlier vintages have shown red raspberry, black cherry, hibiscus and violet, a touch of sandalwood and forest floor, medium body, fine-grained tannin and a bright, juicy finish. The 2025 season was warm and steady with few heat spikes, a dry winter, a short bloom that naturally reduced yields and an early harvest of clean, concentrated fruit.
The People
Walter Scott is Ken Pahlow and Erica Landon. Ken spent 14 years at St. Innocent and worked at Evening Land alongside Dominique Lafon; Erica came up as a sommelier and wine educator. They put their savings into the business at the end of the 2000s, made the first vintages at Patricia Green, and now work out of leased space at Bethel Heights in the Eola-Amity Hills. The name honors Ken's grandfather Walter, a TWA flight engineer, and his nephew Scott. They work with mostly organically farmed, dry-farmed vineyards, and their stated goal is to let each site show through. La Combe Verte gets the same care as their single-vineyard bottlings, and that is why it has become one of the most reliable Oregon Pinot Noirs at its price.
Food Pairing
Pinot Noir from the Eola-Amity Hills wants food with some earth and fat. Pan-roast a pork tenderloin and finish it with a sauce of dried cherries, shallots and a splash of the wine. Wild mushroom risotto with thyme and parmesan picks up the forest-floor side. Grilled king salmon with a crisp skin and a squeeze of lemon lets the acidity cut the oil. Or roast duck legs over lentils with a bit of bacon. La Combe Verte is the Pinot you keep a few of on hand, for the Friday dinner that turns into a longer night.
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Weather shipping advisory: Orders placed during times of extreme heat or extreme cold will be held for no charge until more favorable weather returns.
The Willamette Valley, nestled in Oregon, is a region renowned for its cool-climate wines, particularly its Pinot Noir. While Pinot Noir is its most celebrated variety, the valley is also home to other cool climate varieties like Chardonnay and Riesling. The region's unique terroir, characterized by rolling hills, volcanic and sedimentary soils, and a maritime climate influence, contributes to the elegance and complexity of its wines. The wines of the Willamette Valley offer a delicate balance between fruit, acidity, and earthiness. Its increasingly growing reputation places it among the world’s top regions for Pinot Noir.
Oregon - Willamette Valley
Pinot Noir is a thin-skinned, notoriously difficult-to-grow, low-yielding grape that finds its ancestral home in Burgundy, France, where it produces some of the world's most elegant and nuanced wines. While Burgundy remains its spiritual heartland, Pinot Noir has since traveled the globe, finding success in other cooler climates, notably in California, Oregon, New Zealand, and Germany. This grape is a challenge for any grower, as it requires specific conditions to show its best, and yet the wines it produces are capable of such a captivating and singular character.
