Willamette Valley

The founding is dated to the day by the founder's own winery: on 22 February 1965 David Lett planted his first vines, establishing what The Eyrie Vineyards calls the modern era of winegrowing in the Willamette Valley. He had left California with little more than 3,000 grape cuttings and a conviction that this valley would be the best home for Pinot Noir and Chardonnay outside Burgundy — carrying a viticulture degree, a philosophy degree and eight months of research in European wine regions.

A journal entry from July 1965 survives in the winery's own telling, describing vines that had seemed, a few months earlier, only dead sticks pushed into the Oregon mud. Diana Lett met David in 1966 and records standing in the vineyard three months later; together they planted and expanded the estate on a former orchard in the Dundee Hills, and she named the winery for the eyrie of red-tailed hawks nesting in the firs above the vines.

The famous tasting story is best told in the winery's own careful words: Eyrie's South Block Pinot Noir 'stood shoulder to shoulder with Burgundy in competitions in 1979 and 1980'. The producer publishes no finishing position. The block behind the legend is concrete — planted in 1968, ten rows of David Lett's original Pinot Noir on a convergence of six soil types, bottled as a single-block reserve since 1975. A critic's note the winery republishes calls it America's grand cru Pinot Noir site.

Burgundy's verdict on the valley came as a land purchase. Maison Joseph Drouhin, founded in Beaune in 1880 after Joseph Drouhin moved there from Chablis, established Domaine Drouhin Oregon in the Willamette Valley in 1987 — a 235-acre estate atop the Dundee Hills. Robert J. Drouhin framed the continuity as inheritance: what passes between generations is the search for excellence, intellectual curiosity, values, passion and respect for terroir.

Véronique Drouhin, who grew up in Beaune, has made more than 30 vintages in each of Burgundy and Oregon, and was awarded the Légion d'honneur — France's highest award of merit — in 2019. In Burgundy her title is 'guardian of the Drouhin palate', responsible for the house style in every wine the family produces. Her brother Philippe entered the family business in 1988 and manages the vineyards across Burgundy, Chablis and Oregon.

The AVA was established by Treasury Decision ATF-162, published on 1 December 1983, and amended in March 2016. Its size depends on who is publishing: the federal regulation says approximately 5,200 square miles or 3.3 million acres; the Oregon Wine Board gives 3,428,800 acres; the Willamette Valley Wineries Association states 3,438,000 acres, or 5,372 square miles. The three figures are close, not identical — a reminder that even official geography is an estimate with a byline.

Inside the big valley sit eleven nested AVAs: Chehalem Mountains, Dundee Hills, Eola-Amity Hills, Laurelwood District, Lower Long Tom, McMinnville, Mount Pisgah, Ribbon Ridge, Tualatin Hills, Van Duzer Corridor and Yamhill-Carlton. The subdivision began in 2002, when vineyards and wineries jointly petitioned the TTB to divide much of the northern valley into six more specific AVAs — and the map is still being drawn: Van Duzer Corridor took effect in January 2019, Tualatin Hills and Laurelwood District in June 2020, Lower Long Tom in November 2021 and Mount Pisgah in June 2022.

The paper trail is precise. Dundee Hills was established by T.D. TTB-18, published 30 November 2004; McMinnville by T.D. TTB-22 on 18 January 2005; Lower Long Tom by T.D. TTB-175 on 10 November 2021; Mount Pisgah — the valley's second-smallest AVA — by T.D. TTB-180 on 3 June 2022. Ribbon Ridge sits wholly inside the larger Chehalem Mountains AVA, set apart by its uniform ocean sedimentary soils.

David Lett chose his ground with a soil auger he carried in his car, digging test holes at likely sites. He identified the volcanic Jory and Nekia soils on the valley's hillsides for their combination of limited fertility and superior water-holding — soils deposited as volcanic flows 15 to 17 million years ago, leaving red earth over decomposed basalt cobble. The buried cobble retains enough water in its cracks to carry vines through Oregon's dry summers without irrigation. Jory is now Oregon's state soil.

The valley's other soil signatures came by wind, sea and catastrophe. The Tualatin Hills hold Oregon's largest concentration of Laurelwood soil — a windblown volcanic loess mixed with basalt, deposited by the Missoula floods 12,000 years ago — and the wineries association credits that AVA with the very first commercial vineyard in Oregon. The Van Duzer Corridor, meanwhile, is a gap in the Coast Range through which oceanic winds funnel into the valley, cooling everything in their path.

Oregon's real competitive weapon is administrative. A wine may carry a grape variety on its label only if at least 90 percent of its volume is that variety — against the 75 percent federal floor — with an exception list of eighteen varieties, including Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah and Tempranillo, allowed at 75. The Oregon Liquor and Cannabis Commission states the purpose openly: rigorous standards to ensure accurate presentation and to enhance the quality, image and marketability of Oregon wine.

The appellation rule is stricter still. When an Oregon appellation of origin is claimed, every grape must be grown in Oregon and 95 percent must come from inside that appellation's boundaries — the federal standard asks 85. The appellation must also appear on every brand label in direct conjunction with the wine's class or type designation, in lettering equally conspicuous. A 'Dundee Hills Pinot Noir' is, by law, almost entirely what it says it is.

The founding vines are running out of time, and the founding winery says so plainly. Phylloxera is present in the valley and is taking out The Eyrie Vineyards' original own-rooted plantings; a note the winery republishes carries its own estimate that perhaps ten vintages remain for the original South Block wines. The attrition is already visible in the bottlings: no South Block was produced in 2020, and the Muscat Ottonel planted in 1965 was torn out in 2022 and will not be replanted.

Eyrie's farming reads like a refusal of the last sixty years of viticultural convenience: never herbicides, never pesticides, never tillage, never irrigation, with all five estate vineyards certified organic. The crew visits each of the estate's 50,000 vines twelve to fifteen times across the four seasons, pruning and harvesting by hand. Jason Lett, the second-generation winemaker, compresses the philosophy to a sentence: 'we tread best when we tread lightest'.

The region institutionalised the instinct. Willamette wineries built their own sustainability certification, LIVE, and run it alongside organic and biodynamic certification, the Deep Roots Coalition and the Oak Accord. The old genetics persist in odd corners too: Eyrie's Chardonnay still draws on a massal selection including Wente clones that reached David Lett from Spring Mountain's La Perla vineyard in California — pre-clonal-era material still in production.

The Dundee Hills — 'the epicenter of Oregon Pinot Noir', per its winegrowers association — is where the valley's first grapes were planted, and it remains the most densely planted locale in the valley and the state: 12,500 total acres with 2,225 planted across 98 vineyards, 28 wineries and 32 tasting rooms as the wineries association counts them. Pinot Noir is 69.5 percent of plantings, with Chardonnay at 5.75 and Pinot Gris at 2.23.

Geography explains the density. The Dundee Hills sit about 30 miles south-west of Portland and 40 miles east of the Pacific, with the higher Coast Range standing between the vines and the ocean's weather. Neighbouring McMinnville's AVA — 39,045 total acres, 750 planted — extends about 20 miles south-southwest toward the mouth of the Van Duzer Corridor, Oregon's lowest Coast Range pass to the Pacific, where the ocean air pours through.