Armed with little more than research about soils and a vision of a Burgundian Oregon, the pioneers of Oregon’s wine industry planted vines and the hope that they would create a life they could, one day, share with their kids.
In January, with ten anonymous tasters, 1859 Oregon’s Magazine sampled seven different wines at Grochau Cellars, a winery located in the heart of Portland. Get insight into your next wine purchase with comments, descriptions and ratings found on the following pages.
Oregon’s winemaking tradition is as old as the state itself. Early settlers brought grapes to the Willamette Valley in the mid-19th century. The modern era of Oregon’s wine industry began in 1961, when Richard Sommer left the University of California at Davis to plant grapes in the Umpqua Valley.
Wine consumers and wine tourists can raise their glasses in a toast to the times. Prices have dropped, and wineries are courting tourists through their tasting rooms and wine clubs. The industry is in the hands of hundreds of small, family-owned wineries where visitors can often meet and talk with the people who craft the wine. The state’s wild, scenic beauty, its reputation as a foodie culture and a genuine place to taste wine attract many out-of-state tourists. And instead of all roads leading to Newberg or Dundee as they did in the ’80s and ’90s, wine lovers can get their fix in tasting rooms from Hood River to Ashland.
By summer, I had settled on the most ambitious of all fantasies—to take trail horses on a two-day binge in wine country. In Oregon’s famed Pinot noir region lay a vast wilderness for exploration. Surprising chapters of a bigger story would emerge from that wilderness.
At the northern edge of Oregon’s winemaking region, a Napa Valley couple staked a claim and began a new life of biodynamic farming and making wine with a big table at its center.
Follow your nose through the Pinot Passage, the floodgate to the Willamette Valley wine country. Here’s a sip of history to pair with your next oenophile journey into Oregon’s Burgundian region.
