Willamette Valley

The Oregon Wine Board dates the Pinot noir era to February 1965, when David Lett rooted cuttings near Corvallis, the first plantings in the Willamette Valley. Charles and Shirley Coury joined him that year, and Lett moved the vines to The Eyrie Vineyards in the Dundee Hills, convinced that Burgundian varieties would do better in Oregon than in California. Dick Erath, Dick and Nancy Ponzi, the Sokol Blossers and the Adelsheims followed between 1968 and 1971.

In 1973 a group led by David Adelsheim and David Lett mapped the prime vineyard land of the northern valley and lobbied for its protection under Senate Bill 100. The Eyrie 1975 South Block Reserve Pinot Noir placed in the top ten at the Gault-Millau Wine Olympiad in Paris in 1979. The Willamette Valley AVA was established by T.D. ATF-162 on 1 December 1983, and Dijon clones arrived from 1984. The AVA was extended south in 2016.

The valley follows the Willamette River for about 240 km from the Columbia near Portland to south of Eugene and is up to 97 km wide. The Coast Range blocks cold Pacific air and storms; TTB's Dundee Hills rule gives 2,290–3,430 mm of rain a year on the Coast Range and 760–1,140 mm in the Dundee Hills. The Cascades shut out the dry east. Gaps such as the Van Duzer Corridor let marine air reach the Eola Hills.

About 15 million years ago Columbia River basalt lava flowed into the area. The USDA describes Jory soils, on foothills at 76–760 m, as deep, well-drained silty clay loams formed from basic igneous rock, with about 1,140 mm of rain and a mean of 12 °C. Willakenzie soils formed from marine sandstone and siltstone. TTB's 2016 rule names Bellpine, Jory, Willakenzie, Dupee and Peavine as common series and describes them as xeric, drying out by the end of the growing season.

The Oregon Wine Board describes a long, gentle growing season: warm summers with cool evenings, a long autumn and mild winters. TTB's rules for the nested AVAs show how site changes conditions. In the Dundee Hills, elevation brings warmer nights and less fog and frost than on the valley floor, where cold air settles. Yamhill-Carlton, nearer the Coast Range, is windier and wetter, with about 1,520 mm of rain and fewer degree days. The Eola Hills receive a stronger cooling marine influence through the Van Duzer Corridor. The Board presents the nested AVAs as a way to distinguish these differences within the large region.

The Willamette Valley AVA (27 CFR 9.90) contains eleven nested AVAs: Chehalem Mountains, Dundee Hills, Eola-Amity Hills, Laurelwood District, Lower Long Tom, McMinnville, Mount Pisgah, Polk County, Oregon, Ribbon Ridge, Tualatin Hills, Van Duzer Corridor and Yamhill-Carlton. Under Oregon's rules a wine labelled with any of them must be made entirely from Oregon grapes, 95% of them from the named AVA, and a varietal Pinot noir must contain at least 90% Pinot noir.

Pinot noir is the flagship. The Board lists Pinot gris, Pinot blanc, Chardonnay, Riesling, Melon, Gewürztraminer, Sauvignon blanc, Syrah, Gamay and sparkling wine among the other wines.