Page 116 - SOM_FALL_2020_FLIPBOOK

chow | vino

A PLETHORA OF
P INO T

NOIR S

Oregon excels at a vast range
of Pinot Noir styles

Liza B. Zimmerman

regonians often beg to differ on a number of top-
ics and wine is no different. Producers of Oregon
Pinot Noirs across the state have introduced a
Ohuge scope of Pinot renditions. They can range
from silky-smooth and Burgundy-inspired in the Willamette,
to fruit-juicy and ripe in warmer climes.
What’s more, depending where the Pinot in question is
made, producers may not even agree as to who actually first
brought the clone to the state. “It depends on where you are
located and if you are asking about Oregon in general or the
Willamette Valley,” shares Bree Boskov, a Master of Wine and
the Portland-based education manager of the Portland-based
Oregon Wine Board (OWB).
The most frequently told story is that pioneering vintner David
Lett brough the first Pinot Noir cuttings from California to
the Willamette Valley in 1965. That was the undisputed history
of the grape’s arrival in the state that I had heard for 25 years.
Then, Dyson DeMara at HillCrest, in the Southern Oregon
region of the Umpqua Valley, shared that Pinot Noir grapes
were first grown there and was brought by Richard Sommers,
HillCrest’s original owner in 1961 from cuttings brought to
Oregon in 1959, predating Lett by several years.

Regardless of when the grape arrived in the state, it is known
that 59-percent of the state’s grape production is Pinot Noir,
according to the OWB. Nearly all of the growing regions that
the OWB tracks—including the Umpqua Valley, Rogue Valley,
Willamette, both North and South, Columbia Gorge, and
Northeast Oregon—produce some. The state’s approximately
800 wineries combined, according to the OWB, produce the
third most vitis vinifera grapes, those used to make wines with
the classic and well-known European varietals such as Pinot
Noir. The state comes in at number five in terms of total wine
production.

114 www.southernoregonmagazine.com | fall 2020