Growing grapes in Oregon is fraught with challenges: sunlight and heat can be in short supply so ripening is never a given, rain (about 40 inches/102 centimetres a year in the Willamette Valley) and frost threaten in spring and fall when grapes are most vulnerable, and weather patterns can be erratic — a stressful scenario for vines, which love constancy.
And yet it is precisely the marginality of Oregon's climate, along with the state's unique geologic past, that forms the cradle of its success.
Grapes here cannot burst into ripeness but must make their way slowly and methodically toward maturity and complexity.
Each year is a gamble, but when the forces of nature align with skilled winemaking, Oregon wines of utter beauty, focus and finesse emerge.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century Oregon turned the big corner: having long since given up California as a role model, and then France as well, its winemakers set out on their own course and forged a new way of working with the unique demands of their land, producing a mega-leap in quality — especially for the state's signature pinot noirs.
If wines can be graceful AND luscious, if they can have richness without heaviness, then Oregon is the place to find them.
Oregon also holds itself to stricter rules than federal law requires: its leading wine types — pinot noir, chardonnay and pinot gris — must contain at least 90 percent of the grape named on the label, against the US minimum of 75 percent (cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, syrah, sauvignon blanc and several others thought to benefit from blending are excepted and need only be 75 percent).
