Umpqua Valley: Where Oregon Wine Actually Began

Oregon’s modern wine story is usually told through the Willamette Valley. But it actually began further south, in the Umpqua Valley, four years earlier.

The Umpqua sits in southern Oregon, warmer, on average, and more varied than the Willamette Valley to the north. It is where the state’s first post-Prohibition winery took root, and where growers later proved Oregon could ripen warm-climate grapes.¹

Where Oregon wine began

In 1961, a University of California, Davis graduate named Richard Sommer founded HillCrest Vineyard near Roseburg.¹ It is the oldest continuously operating post-Prohibition estate winery in Oregon, and Sommer planted the state’s first Pinot Noir here, four years before David Lett planted in the Willamette Valley. Told, like Lett after him, that Oregon was too cold and wet, Sommer went ahead and bottled the first Oregon Pinot Noir in 1967.¹

The land, and the AVA

The Umpqua Valley became an American Viticultural Area in 1984.² It sits between the Coast Range to the west and the Cascades to the east, stretching roughly 65 miles north to south. The terrain is a jumble of small valleys, which earns it the nickname the “Hundred Valleys of the Umpqua,” and its climate is warmer and drier on average than the Willamette. That range lets it grow an unusually wide spread of grapes, from Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris to Syrah, Merlot and Albariño.²

Tempranillo country

The Umpqua’s boldest bet was Spanish. In 1995, Earl and Hilda Jones founded Abacela near Roseburg with the specific aim of proving that Tempranillo, the great grape of Rioja, could thrive in a matching climate.³ They were among the first to plant it seriously in the United States, and their success made the Umpqua the American home of Tempranillo. It is the kind of experiment the valley has specialized in since 1961.

Read more

• Willamette Valley: how Oregon became Pinot Noir country
• Dick Erath, an Oregon wine pioneer
• A history of Pinot Noir

References

1. Richard Sommer founding HillCrest near Roseburg in 1961 (Oregon’s oldest continuously operating post-Prohibition estate winery), planting the state’s first Pinot Noir, and bottling the first Oregon Pinot Noir in 1967: Oregon Wine Board; Wine Spectator; Oregon Wine Press.
2. The Umpqua Valley AVA (1984), its position between the Coast Range and Cascades and varied climate, and Abacela (1995) pioneering Tempranillo in the United States: The Oxford Companion to Wine, 4th ed., “Oregon”; Oregon Wine Board; Abacela.

Want to read more? Try these books

The Oxford Companion to Wine Jancis Robinson (ed.)

The Story of Wine Hugh Johnson

Ancient Wine Patrick E. McGovern

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