Teutonic "Wild Game" Red Pinot Gris 2023

This wine is juicy, with notes of light berries balanced by grippy tannins. Light and bright red color with notes of bright red cherry, pomegranate and Jolly Rancher, balanced by grippy tannins from extended skin contact. Best served slightly chilled.

Red Pinot Gris? How is this possible? Well, the 2023 harvest of Pinot Gris came in as purple as the Pinot Noir. Teutonic winemaker Barnaby Tuttle made this wine like he makes all of his red wines: four weeks on the skins with long maceration time to extract as much color as possible.

Old & Cold, High & Dry, Wood & Wild -- that's what is says on the back label of Teutonic's wine bottles. The vines are old, it's a cold site, the vineyard is dry-farmed (no irrigation) and the wine is fermented in neutral oak barrels and only wild yeast from the vineyard is used to ferment the wine. All these things put together make the wines reflective of Alpine wines of Northern Italy, Alsace France and The Mosel Valley in Germany.

Teutonic Wine Company was founded by Barnaby and Olga Tuttle in 2005. While their wines are inspired by the wines of the Middle-Mosel Valley in Germany and Alsace in France, they are a celebration of Oregon. Barnaby and Olga work with cool climate growing sites and are focused on quality farming as well as minimal intervention in both the vineyard and winery.

In the cellar, they embrace a minimalist intervention philosophy and ferment strictly with indigenous yeast native to each vineyard.