Lingua Franca, founded in 2015 by Larry Stone in the Eola-Amity Hills of the Willamette Valley, makes Avni as its regionally drawn Pinot Noir cuvée. The 2023 blends a core of estate fruit with selected neighbouring vineyards across four appellations - the Eola-Amity Hills, Mount Pisgah, Yamhill-Carlton and the Van Duzer Corridor - to build a wine that reads as a portrait of the northern Willamette. Vines sit on the region's volcanic Jory and sedimentary marine soils, and the cooling Pacific air drawn through the Van Duzer gap keeps the fruit fresh. The 2023 season was warm and generous in Oregon, giving ripe, well-coloured Pinot Noir with retained acidity.

Fruit was hand-harvested, sorted and largely destemmed, then fed bin by bin into stainless steel and cement tanks and fermented spontaneously on wild yeast. A portion of the crop, around 10%, went in whole cluster, and a small share underwent carbonic maceration to lift aromatics and add crunchy, structured lift. Cap management was gentle to keep tannins supple. After pressing, the wine aged in French oak barriques, a modest proportion new and the balance older, for roughly twelve months before a period of assemblage in tank ahead of bottling, yielding the tense, savoury, red-fruited style noted by critics.