the Rizzo winery NOTEBOOK
At Rizzo, we want to help our valued customers learn about how many hands this bottle went through before reaching their glass - or why wine has been the chosen beverage for thousands of years throughout history. We wanted to share the tools that enable our wine lovers to feel confident about discussing the bottle of Rizzo they are drinking with friends.
We created the Notebook to help get you there and to pass on our wealth of knowledge to you.
The Holiday Gift Guide Is Here!
Find the perfect gift for all the wine lovers in your life this holiday season! For the Trend Setter, The Extravagant One, Red Wine Lover, and White Wine Lover. Celebrate this holiday season with Rizzo Wines!
Tis the season for shopping for all the people you love! Lucky for you, we’ve got the gift guide you need to give the perfect gift set for all the wine lovers in your life.
For The Trendy One
The New Vintage Bundle
This gift set is perfect for the trend-setter in your life. We just released our 2018 Chardonnay, 2018 Pinot Noir and the fan favorite 2019 Rosé. The 2018 Chardonnay is tropical and bright, while the 2018 Pinot Noir is a classic example of how beautiful Willamette Valley Pinot Noir can truly be. Our 2019 Rosé is what we lovingly call our Winter Rosé, filled with a delicious holiday spice flavor profile that pairs perfectly with a warm fire.
For The White Wine Lover
The White Wine Bundle
Move aside everything you thought you knew about white wine. Each of these wines brings a unique flavor to the party. The 2018 Chardonnay isn’t like your classic oaky, butter bomb of chardonnay. This wine is fleshy, bright, and punchy with tropical fruits that settle into a flavor like a fruity cheesecake. Our 2015 Viognier is made from Viognier grown on our Estate. This wine is dry, but comforting with flavors of apricot, nectarine and some honeyed hazelnut. Even the 2015 Muscat Canelli isn’t what you expect. It’s off-dry, so it does have some subtle sweetness that lends itself to a honey flavor, lychee with white blossoms.
For The Extravagant One
The Luxury Bundle
This is an impressive gift for anyone who enjoys the finer things in life. Two of the most extravagant wines Rizzo Winery has ever made, both of these wines are rich with flavor, and texture. Though the name Cuvee means blend, this wine is made entirely from Cabernet Sauvignon, from two different vineyards. Flavors of coconut soufflé, light vanilla and a depth of blackberry. Our 2012 Petit Verdot is silky and sultry. Both of these wines are made from grapes grown out of ancient ash that settled in Oregon’s Columbia Valley from when Mt. Mazuma exploded and created Crater Lake.
For The Bold & Beautiful
The Bold Red Wine Bundle
All three of these wines are bold, spicy, sultry, and demand attention. Do you have someone in your life like that? If you do, these are the perfect wines for them! Our 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon has a beautiful combination of black cherry, black pepper, and mint that will make your mouth water in delight. It recently won a gold medal at Sip’s Best of Northwest awards. Another gold medal winner is our 2013 Tempranillo, a perfect wine for the Thanksgiving table, a wine with flavors similar to cranberry sauce in the most delicious way. To round off this perfect trio is our 2013 Syrah, a wine with subtle vanilla, spiced walnut and subtle sage.
We have so much more to offer in our Tasting Room! Come visit us every weekend 11-5 PM.
Summer Is Here!
Rizzo Winery is celebrating the summer season with a flight to cool you down while you soak in the sun on our patio, and new hours on Friday so you can stay later with your friends and make those summer memories!
To celebrate the season we’ve got a special flight and new hours!
To us, Summer means getting off early and hitting the happy hour! At Rizzo, happy hours are here all summer long on Fridays from 3 to 7 PM. Reservations are encouraged as we have a small space, but they’re not required. We understand that some things are spontaneous, and we hope you spontaneously decide to visit our Estate Tasting Room!
While tasting through our Summer Breeze flight you’ll feel as free as that bird of prey hunting the sky in the photo above. It begins with our bright 2017 Chardonnay, made entirely in glass. This keeps the flavors fresh and authentic to Chardonnay itself. To continue keeping your cool through the flight is our delicious 2015 Viognier made from grapes on our estate! A heavier, creamy mouthfeel with this white wine gives us a different perspective from the Chardonnay before and gives us the best of both worlds. Our 2019 Pinot Noir Rosé is darker than most rosé’s, a little more time with the skins increases the color in the wine, but also the flavor complexity! This wine is perfect if you want to bridge the gap between rosé and red wine, or to convert your red wine loving friend to the rosé side. To finish off the flight we have our 2014 Carménère, a silky and spicy red wine that pairs perfectly with vegetables right off the BBQ!
Our Estate Tasting Room is Open
Friday 3-7 PM, Saturday and Sunday 11-4 PM
Our 2015 Pinot Noir Is A Winner Baby!
Read all about how delicious our 2015 Pinot Noir is and how it won 90 points and a gold medal in the 2021 Sommeliers Choice Awards!
We entered our 2015 Pinot Noir to the 2021 Sommeliers Choice Awards and we won gold!
2015 Pinot Noir Tasting Notes
2015 was a warm vintage in Eola-Amity Hills, this gave our Pinot Noir a darker color. As the dark ruby wine swirls in the glass, it releases aromas of sour gummy candy, strawberry juice, orange rind, and rhubarb pie. As the wine opens, it lends us earthy aromas of sweet and subtle rosemary. On the tongue, there’s a buzz from the alcohol, followed by an acidity that creates tart cherry flavors as it mingles in your mouth. A silky tannin, with flavors of ripe strawberries and a fruitiness that reminds us of summertime watermelon.
Sommeliers Choice Awards
The goal for the Sommeliers Choice Awards is to provide a valuable benchmark for which wines would make the best addition to a wine list. The judges for the Sommeliers Choice Awards are top sommeliers at restaurants, bars, pubs, and clubs in the United States. They taste the submitted wines and judge them based on how well they will pair with food items, their versatility, typicity, value, quality, and package.
Tasting Room Menu!
Opening our Tasting Room in April 2021, here is our current Tasting Room Menu.
Rizzo Winery’s Estate Tasting Room opened the first weekend in April 2021, below is our current Tasting Room menu.
Rosé For Winter? Groundbreaking.
Forget what you heard about Rosé, delightful in the Summer sure, but have you ever had a Rosé tailored to brighten your spirits during the Winter?
Most people when thinking of Rosé think of the beautiful of shades of pink this wonderful wine comes in, they think of it chilled to perfection and drank in the summer sun. Yes, when bodies of water call out to you, many exercise the “Rosé all day” state of mind. At Rizzo, we did something a little different. We made a Rosé that will invoke that same mindset, with no sunshine involved at all.
Meet the 2019 Pinot Noir Rosé. Made from the dry-farmed Pinot Noir vines that live on our Estate, this Rosé is both fresh and complex. The hue of this wine may be a bit darker than you’re used to, but it’s always in season to dabble with the dark side.
This wine has flavors of black pepper and watermelon, with whispers of strawberry Jell-O on the nose. This wine is bordering Beaujolais-style or a bottle of red wine with the ability to drink well chilled, but it’s that zing of acidity that reminds us that this is indeed a Rosé. Rizzo’s Rosé is perfect for those in-between Winter days, where it’s sunny but blisteringly cold, and pairs perfectly with a crackling fire.
Rizzo's Spotlight: 2011 Estate Pinot Noir
The 2011 Vintage in the Willamette Valley is a Cinderella story of patience, determination, and trust. A beautiful explanation of why some wines need a little extra time (in this case a decade) to show us what they’re truly meant to be.
If you read our last blog post, you’d understand a little better why we love cellaring and aging our wine for you, releasing the wines for sale when we feel they’re truly ready. We cellar our wines with patience and love, so you can skip straight to the fun part, drinking it! There is a unique flavor experience we are able to achieve with this extra time that goes a long way, this is especially the case with our 2011 Estate Pinot Noir.
A candid photo of our 2011 Estate Pinot Noir in the wild
A Cold Vintage Gave Way To Uncertainty
The harvest of 2011 was exceptionally cool in comparison to the years surrounding it. This gave the fruit much more acid development than our palates were used to for Oregon Pinot Noir, resulting in what many classified as a “lean” year. You could find 2011’s dumped, put on sale, and forgotten about. Written off as something unnoteworthy. Something that makes wine age-worthy is a harmony between the acid, fruit, and tannin. Without that harmony, it weighs the scale too far in one direction and won’t create something profound over time. Though many felt like the 2011 vintage was exactly that, the acid outweighing all and tipping the scale in a wholly wrong direction for the typical high-quality wines we were seeing come out of the Willamette Valley, something only a few producers gave in to was trust.
We trusted the fruit that wanted to shine underneath all of the powerful acidity. Those brilliant flavors were there but were currently being overshadowed. Knowing that we made a high-quality wine from the get-go, we wanted to give the 2011 Estate Pinot Noir a fighting chance to show us what it was all about. This meant laying it down to rest for almost a decade.
All of Oregon’s beauty in one photograph, nature in the scenery and Oregon’s bounty in the bottle.
A Decade Of Time Gave Us Decadence
They say patience is a virtue, and when it comes to our 2011 Estate Pinot Noir, they are definitely right. All that time spent in the bottle did not go to waste. Throughout the years the acidity began to settle down and take backstage, while new flavors were being thrust into the spotlight. With an initial aroma of caramelized sugar, like the top of a freshly roasted crème brûlée the warmth that’s developed envelops you. The acid still shows in aromas of ripe cherry. Flavors of raspberries, clove, and rose petals delight the palate. With silky tannins and a delicate acidity on the finish. The depth of flavor in this wine feel like a tale as old as time.
Print this image out and impress your friends with your vintage knowledge as you sip our beautiful wine.
Holiday Season At Rizzo Winery!
Rizzo Winery has gift sets for all the wine lovers in your life! From tasting through our Estate wines, Sampling Big Bold Reds, Library Tasting, and drinking some of our Winemaker’s best work, these gift sets are a great deal.
The holidays have arrived at Rizzo Winery! We have curated some wonderful gift sets at great discounts for you to gift those loved ones that might need a little extra wine this year.
The Rizzo Winery Estate Sampler is an excellent choice for a gift to any wine lover! This gift set covers all the wine bases; red wine, white wine, rosé and even an off-dry white. While tasting through the different styles of wine we make at Rizzo Winery, you’ll also be tasting the essence of our Estate. We have 9 acres of vineyards, in the windy Eola-Amity Hills, where Pinot Noir, Muscat, and Viognier grow harmoniously together. These vineyards are sustainably dry-farmed and follow organic growing principles. The windy vineyard site also allows for these vines to be naturally more disease-resistant.
This Gift Set is straight from our Cellar! The Library Vintage Set showcases how truly magical a beautifully-aged Pinot Noir can become. As Oregon Pinot Noir ages the fruit flavors develop from fresh to earthy, dried and jammy. With these wines each coming from a unique and outstanding vintage, they all have a story to tell.The year 2006, was the inaugural year of the Eola-Amity Hills AVA. A warm and dry summer, a near perfect vintage was the way to celebrate. In 2008, Mother Nature was rewarding with wide temperature swings allowing the fruit to develop balance between richness and depth. An abundance of clusters on the vines allowed for us to be specific and focused on which would create the most outstanding wine. This gift set allows you to take a journey through time, tasting these various years and reminisce on old times.
Though in Willamette Valley, Pinot Noir is king, we often yearn for something a bit bolder. We are so lucky being so close to Oregon’s Columbia Valley, where the sunshine never fades and grapes can ripen to their heart’s content. Our Big Bold Sampler showcases another side to David Rizzo’s winemaking expertise, silky and powerful red wines. These wines are delicious, delivering dark fruit flavors, effortlessly dancing around flavors of vanilla, clove and nutmeg, the flavors of oak. These wines are from our cellar where they have had years to create harmony in the bottle. Showcasing the 2012 Zinfandel, 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon, and 2012 Petit Verdot, this holiday sampler is luxurious and perfect for the red wine lover in your life.
At Rizzo Winery we pride ourselves on being The Winemakers Wine, allowing David Rizzo full artistic control of his passionate process. A natural gift, David uses his winemaking tools like paintbrushes on canvas. The Winemakers Sampler is a complete expression of his repertoire. Pairing his masterpiece, Cabernet Sauvignon, with his Estate Pinot Noir and stunning fan favorite the Carménère*. Each bringing a different flavor profile, from the rich and bold Cabernet Sauvignon to the lighter, more finessed, Pinot Noir, to the silky and spicy Carménère.
*For online sales of this gift set we have replaced the Carménère with the Tempranillo.
Rizzo Winery's 2008 Pinot Noir
One of the most picture-perfect vintages the Willamette Valley has ever seen. A vintage that created a wine that was rushed into wine cellars by buyers, leaving it sold out to anyone late to the game. Luckily for all of you, we are sharing our cellar with you, so you can have a luxurious tasting experience with the 2008 vintage.
The 2008 vintage was a knockout for the Willamette Valley. It had everything vintners love, naturally lower yields, a bit of rain towards harvest that didn’t dilute the grapes but hydrated them instead, and a range of temperatures that allow for interesting acidity and flavors to develop all summer long. A vintage that swept the valley and sold out to be stored in wine cellars all over the world. Luckily for you all, we love sharing and have brought this bottled beauty out of our cellar for you to enjoy the luxury of drinking perfectly aged Pinot Noir.
A stunning appearance of our 2008 Pinot Noir.
The luxury of a well aged Pinot Noir, tasting incredible right from the cellar.
An outstanding vintage, a pretty much sold out everywhere vintage, that we have for you!
Rizzo Winery's 2011 Pinot Noir Rosé
Learn all about our bone dry, delicious, tangerine forward Rosé made with the finest Pinot Noir grapes from Oregon's famous winemaking region the Willamette Valley.
The world has come a long way from the days of White Zinfandel in the 1980’s, since then we’ve seen a resurgence of Rosé wines. Now, it seems, there is a Rosé for every occasion, with every flavor profile, and in every pink hue imaginable. Yes, normally Rosé is from the newest vintage filled with youth and optimism, but 2011 was an interesting vintage here in the Willamette Valley. We found that with all of the greatest things in life there is patience that lies beneath the surface. Pinot Noir across the valley are tasting the best they’ve ever been from 2011 and even the Rosé’s needed this time to develop what would become delicious signature flavors.
A soft salmon hue of beauty in our 2011 Pinot Noir Rosé.
A printable tasting note to read as you sip and swirl your beautiful rosé.
Learn all about weather from the 2011 vintage and the journey of the grape to make the wine!
Rizzo Winery's 2006 Pinot Noir
Dive into the world of well-aged Pinot Noir with us as we share some knowledge on aging wines, our 2006 Pinot Noir flavor profile, and the 2006 vintage here in the Eola-Amity Hills.
There is a common misconception about aging Pinot Noir that exists in society, and we’re here to tell you that the age limits that exist are guidelines, not hard fast rules. Aging wine, in any sense is fully dependent on the quality of the wine you’re trying to age. Our wines are of incredible quality, we have cellared these wines because we believed in them, and now we’re drinking the benefits of that. This 2006 Pinot Noir is a delicious and true testament to this belief. Buy a bottle or two, grab a glass and enjoy the luxury of aged Pinot Noir.
Our 2006 Pinot Noir, just as beautiful as ever
Printable tasting note for the 2006 Pinot Noir, read as you sip!
Vintage notes for 2006, a little insight in the grapes journey from bud burst to the bottle you’re drinking from!