Eyrie’s Trifolium brings together all three red varieties grown on its five estate vineyards. Some unwelcome rain at flowering decimated yields for the Eyrie team in 2020, leaving them 60% down overall. So, Jason decided to blend all his reds from the season into one wine. It’s important to note that Jason considers the quality of the vintage among the very best he’s seen. We’ll let him explain: “The density and concentration of this vintage are like nothing we’ve ever seen, putting even vintages like 1988 and 1998 to shame. Yet due to the cool summer, the natural acidity is as close to perfect as we could ever hope for, and alcohols are modest.”
What you’re getting with the Trifolium is Eyrie’s best Pinot Noir fruit (so the Willamette Valley’s best Pinot), including the material that would usually make the flagship single-vineyard bottlings, combined with Meunier and Trousseau, from an excellent vintage.
The blend is Pinot Noir (77%), Trousseau (15%) and Meunier (8%), picked by hand, destemmed and fermented in a range of vessels. Punch-downs were done by hand twice daily, and the wine matured for 28 months in wood, 17% of which was new.