The Willamette Valley Wine Region

In the early 1960s the experts were unanimous: Oregon was too cold and too wet to ripen fine wine grapes. One stubborn young Californian disagreed — and within two decades the Willamette Valley was beating Burgundy at its own game. Today this green ribbon of land south of Portland is one of the world’s great homes of Pinot Noir, and its rise is among the most improbable stories in modern wine¹.

Papa Pinot’s gamble

David Lett studied viticulture at the University of California, Davis, where his professors insisted Pinot Noir belonged in Burgundy, not America. Convinced they were wrong, in 1965 he carried three thousand grape cuttings north and planted them in the Dundee Hills of the Willamette Valley, founding The Eyrie Vineyards. His neighbours thought him mad; history would call him “Papa Pinot,” the father of the Oregon wine industry¹.

A valley built for Pinot

The Willamette Valley runs for more than a hundred miles between the Coast Range to the west and the Cascade Mountains to the east, sheltered, cool and lying on roughly the same latitude as Burgundy. Its hillsides carry iron-rich volcanic Jory soils and ancient marine sediments, and its long, mild autumns let thin-skinned Pinot Noir ripen slowly and gently — exactly the conditions the grape craves².

The tasting that stunned Burgundy

Oregon announced itself to the world in 1979. At the Gault-Millau “Wine Olympiad” in Paris, Lett’s 1975 Eyrie Reserve Pinot Noir placed among the very best Pinots in a blind field thick with Burgundies. A stunned Burgundian, Robert Drouhin, staged a rematch the next year — and the Eyrie finished a whisker behind Drouhin’s own grand cru. So convinced was Drouhin that he bought land and founded Domaine Drouhin Oregon in 1987, Burgundy’s own seal of approval on the valley³.

An Oregon Pinot, planted a decade earlier, stood shoulder to shoulder with grand cru Burgundy.— the 1979 Wine Olympiad³

Drawing the map

Recognition brought regulation. On 1 December 1983 the Willamette Valley became Oregon’s first American Viticultural Area — the 55th in the United States⁴. As plantings spread, growers mapped the valley’s distinct pockets into nested sub-appellations such as the Dundee Hills, Eola-Amity Hills and Ribbon Ridge, each with its own soils and character — a Burgundian instinct for dividing the land by taste⁵.

Oregon today

From Lett’s lonely rows the valley has grown into hundreds of wineries, most of them small, family-run and fiercely protective of their environment; Oregon pioneered some of the country’s strictest sustainability rules. Pinot Noir remains the heart of it all, with Pinot Gris and Chardonnay close behind — a cool-climate answer to California that has made Oregon a byword for elegance rather than power⁶.

Frequently asked questions

Read more

• David Lett, “Papa Pinot”
• Dick Erath, Oregon wine pioneer
• The 1976 Judgment of Paris

References

1. Wine Spectator — Oregon Wine Pioneer David Lett Dies. ↑
2. Encyclopaedia Britannica — Willamette River. ↑
3. The Eyrie Vineyards — Our Story. ↑
4. TTB — List of AVAs by Establishment Date. ↑
5. Willamette Valley Wineries Association — Willamette Valley AVA. ↑
6. Oregon Wine Board — Oregon Wine. ↑

Recommended reading

Vintage: The Story of Wine

Hugh Johnson

Places Oregon’s cool-climate rise within the wider story of world wine.

A Short History of Wine

Rod Phillips

Good on the New World’s modern emergence, including the Pacific Northwest.

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