From Vine to Magnum: Kim Abrahams on Winemaking, Connection, Vireton Pinot Noir and the 2024 Vintage

Some wines are made to be saved. Vireton isn’t one of them.

“The best bottle is the one that gets opened,” says Kim Abrahams, Winemaker at Archery Summit. It’s a simple idea, but it’s the whole philosophy behind Vireton, a Pinot Noir built not for the cellar, but for tonight.

Kim officially joined Archery Summit as Winemaker in 2025, but her fingerprints are all over the 2024 vintage. She stepped in during the critical post-harvest window, guiding the blending decisions and shaping the wine through its final stages in the cellar, the work that determines what actually ends up in the bottle. Vireton’s 2024 vintage is very much her wine.

What Vireton Is

Vireton is Archery Summit’s invitation into the Willamette Valley. It brings together Pinot Noir from the estate vineyards in the Dundee Hills with fruit from a cooler site farther south, a combination that gives the wine both the structure Archery Summit is known for and the bright, energetic fruit that makes Oregon Pinot Noir so easy to love. “It’s crafted with the same intention as our estate wines, but with a different purpose,” Kim explains, “to be opened often, shared generously, and enjoyed from the very first bottle.” Whether it’s dinner with friends, a backyard barbecue, or a bottle someone grabs on the way to a gathering, Vireton is meant to be part of life’s everyday celebrations, not saved for the ones circled on the calendar.

The 2024 Vintage: Calm, Confident, Ready to Drink

The 2024 growing season gave Kim and her team something rare: room to breathe. “The 2024 vintage had a calmness to it that doesn’t come around very often,” she says. “Instead of feeling rushed from one vineyard to the next, we were able to let the fruit tell us when it was ready.” Beautiful weather through harvest let the grapes develop real balance while holding onto their freshness and bright aromatics, exactly what Vireton is built on.

For Kim, the vintage wasn’t a lesson in patience so much as one in confidence. “The vintage gave us beautiful fruit, and our job became preserving that energy from vineyard to bottle,” she says. “Every decision, from harvest timing to fermentation, was focused on protecting the freshness and purity of the fruit so people could enjoy the wine as soon as they cracked it open.”

That philosophy carries through into the cellar. Pump overs, one of the primary tools used in making Vireton, introduce oxygen that supports the wine’s ambient yeast while offering a gentler extraction than punch downs. “The goal is never to make a bigger wine,” Kim says. “It’s to preserve freshness, brightness, and all of those vibrant red fruit characteristics.” Every day in the cellar means tasting and adjusting, always in service of the fruit’s purity rather than layering more onto it.

The result is a Pinot Noir that tastes like exactly what it was made to be: juicy red cherry, raspberry, and pomegranate, with delicate hints of baking spice, rose petal, and subtle earth. Medium-bodied, with silky tannins and a lively thread of bright acidity, finished with a whisper of vanilla and cocoa. It’s a wine equally at home at a casual dinner or a bigger celebration, made to be opened, not deliberated over.

It’s also a departure for Kim in some ways. “Throughout my career, I’ve spent a lot of time making wines designed to evolve over decades,” she says. “Vireton challenges me to think differently, and I love that. The goal isn’t to make a wine people feel they must save, it’s to make one they’re excited to open tonight.”

Why the Magnum

If Vireton is about pouring generously, the magnum is just that idea, sized up. This isn’t a bottle built to sit in a cellar and wait for a milestone. It’s built for backyard dinners, holiday gatherings, the first BBQ of summer, a pizza night, friends who show up unannounced and end up staying for hours.

A magnum doesn’t ask you to plan ahead. It asks you to invite more people. More glasses around the table. More stories by the time the bottle’s empty. As Kim puts it, “there’s something really rewarding about knowing this is the bottle someone brings to a friend’s house, opens around the dinner table, or shares while watching a game.” Buy the big bottle not because you should age it for ten years, but because more people are coming over.

The Moments In Between

Wine doesn’t always have to mark life’s biggest milestones. Sometimes, as Kim says, “the best bottles are the ones that become part of the moments in between,” the patio after work, the game on in the background, the friends who stopped by and stayed. That’s what Vireton, and the magnum that carries even more of it, is made for.

Wine is meant to be shared, not saved.

Shop the 2024 Vireton Magnum