Antica Terra Ceras Pinot Noir 2013

Ceras is Botanica's counterpoint. Its color is more purple than red. It is more about minerals and herbs than fruit and flowers. It is a focused and elegant distillation of rock rather than an opulent cascade of fruit. It is an expression of the geology that lays beneath our land, the tart blue fruits of the coast range and the tender herbs that one finds amongst the trees and mushrooms of the Northwest forest.

Antica Terra is 40-acres of rocky hillside in the Eola-Amity Hills of the Willamette Valley. The first vines were planted here in 1989 in a clearing within the oak savannah. They carefully prepared a place for the plants amid the rock: a fractured mixture of sandstone and alluvium sown with fossilized oyster shells. The site is dramatic. It’s exposed boulders, steeply pitched grades and panoramic views of the surrounding land convey a feeling of imposing scale and intensity. The west wind moves constantly through the vines and the unforgiving afternoon sun shines upon them. But it’s what we can’t see and feel, those aspects of the site that the vines allude to as they struggle, that make it a remarkable place.