David Lett planted the Willamette Valley's first Pinot Noir in 1965 against the explicit advice of the University of California, which held Oregon too cold and wet for wine. A decade proved the heresy: at the 1979 Paris "Wine Olympics", his 1975 Eyrie South Block placed among fine Burgundies, and the result was startling enough that Maison Drouhin of Beaune bought land next door in 1987 — the Burgundian seal on an American valley.
The valley's gifts are marginal-climate gifts: cool marine air drawn inland through the Van Duzer corridor, long dry autumns, and the red jory volcanic soil of its hills. The wines run to cherry, rose hip and forest floor — silkier than California, more sunlit than Burgundy — and Pinot Noir remains the valley's single obsession.