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A dozen Oregon Pinot Noirs

By Andy Perdue on January 19, 2014

Dundee Hills American Viticultural Area is in the northern Willamette Valley in Oregon.

The Dundee Hills is in the northern Willamette Valley, the heart of Oregon wine country. (Photo by Andy Perdue/Great Northwest Wine)

No area of the New World identifies so closely with Pinot Noir than Oregon, particularly the Willamette Valley.

Since the early 1970s, Oregon has been famous for the red grape of Burgundy, France. David Lett, fondly remembered as Oregon’s “Papa Pinot,” moved to Oregon in 1966 and bought property. His Eyrie Vineyards 1975 South Block Pinot Noir stunned experts in international judgings in 1979 – not unlike the famous Judgment of Paris tasting that catapulted California to fame three years earlier.

The result of Eyrie Vineyards’ success prompted high interest in Oregon Pinot Noir, and within a decade, famed Burgundy producer Robert Drouhin bought property in the Dundee Hills and launched Domaine Drouhin Oregon

Here we present a dozen Oregon Pinot Noirs we’ve tasted in the past couple of months, 11 of which are from the Willamette Valley.

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About Andy Perdue

Andy Perdue is the editor and publisher of Great Northwest Wine. He is a third-generation journalist who has worked at newspapers since the mid-1980s and has been writing about wine since 1998. He co-founded Wine Press Northwest magazine with Eric Degerman and served as its editor-in-chief for 15 years. He is a frequent judge at international wine competitions. He is the author of "The Northwest Wine Guide: A Buyer's Handbook" (Sasquatch, 2003) and has contributed to four other books. He writes about wine for The Seattle Times. You can find him on Twitter and Google+.