Norris Wines: The Best Story on Ribbon Ridge You Haven’t Heard Yet

It’s been a little bit. How have you been? Can you believe today is Halloween? Do you know this means Starbucks is coming out with their red cups in a couple of weeks? Blink three times quickly, and before you know it, we are celebrating a new year.

For me, it’s been a great year so far, and I’m planning to kick off the new year with a HUGE bang a few weeks into January. What is it? Well, I can’t exactly say at the moment, but it is all about taking Block 55 to another level. Stay tuned for more info!

With today being Halloween, there are always a couple of good spooky winery stories. There’s always the ghost at Del Rio in Southern Oregon, but this year was the first I heard about some spirited escapades at Argyle. You should read about it yourself.

If that doesn’t freak you out enough, how about the most bizarre Oregon wine story ever? 

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Wait, hold on a second. I need to mention something about Oregon vintages super quick. The 2024s have been showing so well. I’ve had some 2025s and they are showing beautifully too, and I’m hearing 2026 is also turning out to be a great vintage. I am so happy to get some solid Oregon vintages on the books!

Here we go!

Picture this. It’s the mid-2000s and Robert McKinley is a high school kid in Huntington Beach. Beach volleyball. Surfing. Summers in the water. Wine is not even a blip on his radar.

Then his parents sit him down and tell him they bought a property in Newberg, Oregon. Robert had never even been to Oregon!

The property was a big old hazelnut orchard with a house and a barn. It was so overgrown that when he looked out the window on those first visits, there wasn’t much to see except hazelnut trees. That was 2005, the same year Ribbon Ridge became its own AVA. Talk about timing.

In 2007 the family planted grapes. Their neighbor James Frey of Trisaetum, a friend of Robert’s parents, made the first wines from the fruit.

Here’s my favorite part of the whole story. As a high school senior, Robert came up for a visit and got put to work in the back at a Trisaetum club release, folding boxes and packing wine shipments. He told the Oregon Wine History Archive that he stood there thinking, “wow, this is a really neat industry.”

Robert went to Cal Poly, got into the fruit science program, then took nothing but wine classes until the professors finally gave up and let him into the wine program. His first internship was in Paso Robles, where someone on the bottling line got hurt and Robert became “the forklift guy” for the summer. To this day, he tells every young winemaker to learn to drive a forklift.

Then the stamps on his passport started piling up:

• Trisaetum, right next door, for his first full vintage
  
• Williams Selyem in Sonoma
  
• Craggy Range in New Zealand. He applied for a scholarship to go and bombed the interview because he was sick that day. Then on Christmas Eve, the winemaker emailed and said, basically, come anyway. Robert paid his own way.
  
• Torbreck in Australia’s Barossa Valley, pruning vines over 100 years old. He came home with an Aussie accent.
  
• Jonata and The Hilt in Santa Barbara
  
• Vineyard 29 in Napa, right through the 2017 wildfires
  

And here’s the thing that got me. Through all of it, Robert never told anyone his family owned a vineyard in Oregon. He wanted to earn it like everyone else, with no special treatment.

In 2018 Robert came home for good. He worked harvest at J Christopher and spent a year and a half in the tasting room at WillaKenzie learning how to talk to guests and sell wine. Meanwhile, the family’s fruit contract (Van Duzer had been farming the site since around 2015) wrapped up, and the dream that had always been “maybe one day” around the family dinner table started becoming real.

They began turning the old barn into a winery. Then 2020 showed up and said, “hold my beer.”

Robert made his very first Norris vintage in a winery that was maybe three-quarters built, with no windows or doors, during the year the whole West Coast was on fire. The family had already paid for a full year of farming, so they made a call: ferment everything, and if it turned out undrinkable, stop. It never came to that. That first vintage was 213 cases of Riesling and 650 cases of Pinot.

He’s completely upfront about it, too. “I’m not going to pretend it didn’t happen,” he said. You have to love that kind of honesty.

Ribbon Ridge is Oregon’s smallest AVA, about three and a half miles long, and nearly every acre of it is planted to Pinot Noir. Norris has about ten acres of Pinot too. But tucked into the estate are two acres of Riesling, and Robert lights up when he talks about it.

He calls Riesling misunderstood. He loves watching guests discover it in the tasting room. In his own words, “I have to be the champion of Riesling.”

He grows two clones. Clone 9 comes from Geisenheim in Germany, a place he actually visited as a student (he laughs about that). He says it tastes like pineapple. Clone 12 leans more toward stone fruit. Some of the Riesling ages in large Austrian oak casks, a style he fell for while touring Austria and Eastern Europe in college.

And the vines are getting older now. Robert likes to say they’re starting to wander into “old vine” territory, which in Oregon Riesling is a rare and wonderful thing.

Shall we talk a bit about the wines?

2024 Coury Pinot

Coury is the famous “suitcase clone” Charles Coury brought back from Alsace in the 1960s, so this one is a special treat. The entry was a great expression of dark and light fruit competing for your attention. The mid-palate was subtle, with a slightly tannic finish. I enjoyed it.

2024 Estate Pinot

Compared to the Coury Pinot, this was all about the brighter red fruit. It’s elegant, and for me, it’s a great expression of Pinot.

2023 Reserve Pinot

With this being a 2023 Reserve with only three years of age on it, you are going to get a bigger expression of Pinot. Why is this? Well, a Reserve is meant to be put down. If you enjoy bigger Pinots, this is your jam now! And if you can look into the future of what this wine can be, I promise you will not be disappointed several years from now.

2024 White Pinot

When was the last time you had a White Pinot? Did you go to the White Pinot Fest at Saffron Fields the other weekend? Unfortunately, Norris wasn’t at the event because the team is so small, and it’s hard to juggle the tasting room and an event at the same time. This White Pinot is the wine that grabs people’s attention when they aren’t paying attention to what’s in their glass. It’s nice and fruity, and it would be perfect with turkey in a few weeks!

I tasted both Rieslings side by side, and tasting the difference between the two was fabulous! Both were great, they contrasted beautifully, and again, both would pair perfectly with Turkey Day!

2023 Dry Riesling

So much fruit on the entry and mid-palate, and a big-time long finish! A bit acidic, with a heavier body. Just what you’d expect in a dry Riesling.

2023 Reserve Riesling

Sometimes you hear a Chardonnay described as straight and linear. That’s what I experienced here. This was a precise, straight-line, fruit-driven wine. It was super light-bodied compared to the Dry Riesling and was my favorite of the two.

You are probably aware of Trisaetum Winery on Ribbon Ridge Road. If you look, there is a driveway right before you get to Trisaetum. That’s Norris. It’s hidden a little bit, but totally worth it! Visit their website to book a reservation through Tock. When you walk into the tasting room, tell Amy or Darla, “A.J. sent me!”

Have you ever tried an Oregon Riesling that changed your mind about the grape? Hit that reply button and tell me about it. I read every single one.

With Gratitude,

A.J.

PS - I didn’t do my research beforehand and should have asked why the name Norris while I was there, but I did not. If you know or find out, please let me know!

PPS - Did you know Domaine Divio has Dick Erath’s Clone 95 on the property? I had some of the 2022 Legacy of the Pioneers Pinot the other day. It’s part Coury and part Clone 95. So very good!