The Wines and Wineries of OREGON’S Willamette Valley Portland Gaston 0 miles 5 219 Elk Cove Vineyards The Wines and Wineries of 47 To Portland Nicolas-Jay Ponzi Vineyards 219 Sherwood Bergström Wines Beaux Frères OREGON’S Patricia Green Yamhill Cellars Adelsheim Willamette Valley 99W 240 ROCO Winery Ken Wright Cellars From Pinot Noir to Chardonnay Antica Terra Newberg Carlton Evening Lands Vineyards Chapter 24 Erath Winery Dundee 47 Argyle Winery Domaine Serene Purple Hands Winery Domaine Drouhin Oregon Archery Summit 99W Sokol Blosser SUB-APPELATIONS The Eyrie Vineyards Dayton Chehalem Mountains Dundee Hills McMinnville 18 Eola-Amity Hills McMinnville 221 Ribbon Ridge 1. e Eyrie Vineyards 18 2. Ponzi Vineyards Yamhill-Carlton 3. Erath Winery Willamette 4. Adelsheim WILLAMETTE River 5 5. Beaux FrèresNICK WISE & LINDA SUNSHINE 6. Domaine Serene VALLEY 7. Purple Hands Winery 8. Ken Wright Cellars Principal Photography by AVA 9. ROCO Winery JULIE WISE Portland 10. Argyle Winery 11. Cristom Vineyards Area of detail 99W 12. Archery Summit 13. Patricia Green Cellars Eugene OREGON 14a. Domaine Drouhin OregonA WELCOME ENTERPRISES BOOK 14b. Evening Land Vineyards 5 14c. Chapter 24 Cristom Vineyards 14e. Domaine Nicolas-Jay Aa. Antica Terra Ab. Bergström Wines To Salem Ac. Elk Cove Vineyards Ad. Sokol Blosser Salem Contents 9 Introduction: Valley of the Grapes 161 Chapter 10: From the Nuthouse to the Haunted House and Beyond ARGYLE WINERY, Dundee 25 Chapter 1: Papa Pinot THE EYRIE VINEYARDS, McMinnville 177 Chapter 11: A Little Touch of Corruption CRISTOM VINEYARDS, Salem 41 Chapter 2: Hillside of Our Dreams PONZI VINEYARDS, Sherwood 189 Chapter 12: Cave Dwellers ARCHERY SUMMIT, Dayton 57 Chapter 3: An Alternate Legacy ERATH WINERY, Dundee 207 Chapter 13: The Patty and/or Jim Road Show PATRICIA GREEN CELLARS, Newberg 75 Chapter 4: An Early Latecomer ADELSHEIM, Newberg 223 Chapter 14: The French Connection DOMAINE DROUHIN OREGON, Dayton 91 Chapter 5: The Holy Grail of Pinot Noir EVENING LAND VINEYARDS, Dundee BEAUX FRÈRES, Newberg CHAPTER 24, Dundee MAISON LOUIS JADOT, Yamhill-Carlton 107 Chapter 6: The Only Oregonians Making Wine in France NICOLAS-JAY, Yamhill DOMAINE SERENE, Dayton 245 Afterword: Visiting the Willamette Valley 123 Chapter 7: A Youth Spent in the Vineyard PURPLE HANDS WINERY, Dundee 252 Appendix: Four More Favorites ANTICA TERRA, Dundee 135 Chapter 8: Mother Rock BERGSTRÖM WINES, Newberg KEN WRIGHT CELLARS, Carlton ELK COVE VINEYARDS, Gaston SOKOL BLOSSER, Dayton 149 Chapter 9: At His Wits’ End ROCO WINERY, Newberg 263 Glossary 268 Photography Credits 269 Acknowledgments Page 3: Pinot Noir grapes at Elk Cove Vineyards, in Gaston. 271 Biographies Introduction Valley of the Grapes In 2010, after working in the wine business for nearly two decades, Nick noticed a burgeoning trend. Suddenly, it seemed as though celebrities were slapping their names on wine labels and promoting themselves as working winemakers. Nick wondered if these celebrities were actually involved in the winemaking process, and he wanted to learn more. That was the beginning of our first adventure in making books together. We embarked on an extensive wine tour, a journey that took us from Napa to Tuscany to find the famous people who were claiming to be modern winemakers. After our book,Celebrity Vineyards, was published in 2013, we wrote a follow-up edition that focused solely on the West Coast. California Celebrity Vineyards: From Napa to Los Olivos in Search of Great Wine was published in February 2016. By this time, another winemaking region had captured Nick’s imagination and his palate: The Pacific Northwest. He’d discovered that his favorite wine shop, Handford’s, in West London, near where he lives, had begun stocking wines from places called Cristom, Domaine Serene, and Archery Summit. With this introduction to the wines of Oregon, Nick realized that these Pinot Noirs could easily compete with some of his favorites from Burgundy. This was both a delight and a sur- prise. Nick wanted to visit the region, one of the few wine- making areas of the world he had never seen. The original idea was to write a book about the wines of Oregon and Washington called The Wines of the Pacific Northwest. To that end, we packed up and headed off to Portland in March 2016. Joining us was Nick’s recent bride, Julie, who would be our resident photographer. We started where most of Nick’s favorite wineries were located—in the Willamette Valley, which runs southward from the Columbia River at Portland for nearly 150 miles. The region is divided into six sub-AVAs: Dundee Hills, Eola-Amity Hills, Ribbon Ridge, McMinnville, Yamhill-Carlton District, and Chehalem Mountains. Pages 6–7 and opposite: Views of the gorgeous vineyards at Domaine Serene, in Dayton. Above: Our first rental, in Gaston, designed by famed winemaker Tony Soter. 9 Our first trip to the valley was nothing short of amazing. We gathered a wealth of knew personally who lived in town. We soon discovered that material—the people we met were incredibly knowledgeable and passionate about winemaking. Oregon is the kind of place that indulges and even supports And the wines were first class. Though we began with labels Nick knew, we soon expanded our people with all kinds of passions. It is one of the reasons we base to wineries that were not distributed in London. One winemaker would suggest another, and fell in love with it. every day we encountered a new amazing vintage. Of course, we hit a few clinkers along the way, Of course, the main passion we discovered was for Pinot but overall, the good (and the great) far outweighed the mediocre. Noir. There are only a handful of places on the planet where Wine lovers around the world know that this is what a regional wine-tasting tour is all about: this finicky grape can grow, and thanks to many factors such the thrill of discovery. as climate and soil, the Willamette Valley is one of them. Though it may be obvious today that this land is perfectly McMinnville Madness suited to cultivating Pinot Noir, that was not always the case. In fact, the wine industry in Oregon is only 50 years old. We came home to Los Angeles after several weeks to realize we’d barely scratched the surface of Compare that to some of the vineyards in Burgundy that date the Willamette Valley. We wanted to go back and find the winemakers who were not available back to the 15th century, and you begin to understand just Pinot Noir grapes. to meet with us during that first tour, learn more about the wineries we loved, and research the how young this winemaking community is. many others that had been recommended. We decided to forget about Washington (and the rest of In time, we learned that a group of extraordinarily daring and prescient people risked every- Oregon), at least for the moment. Instead, we would concentrate on this one particular region— thing to settle here and take on the challenge of establishing a brand-new industry. the Willamette Valley. We returned to Portland in May 2016, and, now more familiar with the area, rented a house in How We Picked Our Wineries McMinnville, in the heart of the valley. Walking through this quaint and historic town, we noticed that people in the streets were dressed, well, a bit oddly, to By some accounts, there are now close to 600 say the least. Folks were wandering around downtown wear- wineries in the Willamette Valley, whereas ing aluminum antennas that reflected the sunlight as they in the early 1970s, there were only a dozen. bobbed and swayed. Others wore entire outfits constructed of Since we could not begin to cover even a frac- foil or costumes straight out of an outer space B-movie. tion of the current wineries, our idea was We soon discovered we had arrived during the annual to focus specifically on wineries that either UFO Festival, a traditional McMinnville event attended by had significant historical importance to the thousands. Founded in 1999 to honor what are considered valley and the industry or were symbolic to be the first photos of a UFO sighting, snapped in 1950 of the smaller, cult wineries that embody the by local farmers Evelyn and Paul Trent (images are viewable spirit of innovation and experimentation that online), the festival has turned into an epic celebration of all defines Oregon wines. We wanted to explore each things extraterrestrial. “As a result,” said Cathy Martin, Argyle winery in some depth to present an overall view Winery’s marketing coordinator, “there was no aluminum foil of what it takes to build a winery from scratch to be found in all of McMinnville” the weekend of the event. (both in the early days and today) and—from the Most of the Oregonians we met take the festival with a perspective of the second-generation winemak- A streetlamp is decorated for the shrug and an indulgent smile, but at dinner one night, Nick ers—what it’s like to carry forth the legacy of the Nick Wise tasting Purple Hands wines UFO Festival, in McMinnville. met a woman who swore there were “at least eight aliens” she original pioneers. at our rental house, in McMinnville. 10 11 Introduction A Hunch and a Prayer became the standard-bearer in the area. For his accomplishments, his very high criteria for excel- lence, his stubborn pursuit of the best his vineyard could offer, and his Hemingway-style beard, he The story of Oregon Pinot Noir goes back to the late 1960s and early 1970s. Up until then, the was dubbed “Papa Pinot” by his fellow winemakers.