History of Oregon Wine - Rebirth of An Industry: The 1960s and 1970s

Rebirth of An Industry: The 1960s and 1970s

The Oregon wine industry started to rebuild in the 1960s. Hillcrest Vineyard, established by UC Davis graduate Richard Sommer, opened near Roseburg in 1961 (in what is now the Umpqua Valley AVA), with the first vintage appearing for sale in 1964. Among the first varieties planted by Mr Sommer in 1961 was the first Pinot Noir in Oregon that was also the first commercially available Oregon Pinot Noir with the 1967 vintage. Also in the 1960s, several winemakers started planting Pinot noir grapes in the Willamette Valley, including David Lett and Charles Coury. In 1966, Lett planted a Vineyard in the hills outside of Dundee.

By 1970, the state had five bonded wineries, with 35 acres (140,000 m2) in production. Many out-of-state winemakers, the bulk of them from California, began migrating to the state, including Dick Erath, Dick and Nancy Ponzi, Susan and Bill Sokol Blosser of Sokol Blosser Winery, David and Ginny Adelsheim, Pat and Joe Campbell, Jerry and Ann Preston, and Myron Redford. In 1973, Oregon passed its landmark land-use law, which imposed strict separation between agricultural and urban uses of land via such mechanism as the Urban Growth Boundary and Exclusive Farm Use Zones. This prevented many hillsides, deemed inappropriate for other crops which are easier to grow on flat fields, from being converted to housing. Also in the 1970s, the winemakers of the region began to organize to promote their vintages. In 1977, the first coffee table book about Northwest wines, entitled Winemakers of the Pacific Northwest, was printed; the following year, a joint marketing brochure entitled "Discover Oregon Wines" was published.

But it was events of 1979 that put the Oregon wine industry on the map. Eyrie Vineyards' 1975 South Block Pinot Noir placed in the top 10 at the Gault-Millau French Wine Olympiades, and was rated the top Pinot Noir, one of several non-European vintages to outplace French wines in the competition. Not only did the competition establish Oregon as a region capable of producing top-quality wines, it also established that premium winemaking was not the exclusive province of Europe, France in particular. French winemaker Robert Drouhin arranged for a rematch, pitting the Eyrie pinot noir against a group of French wines considered to be finer than those in the Wine Olympics. The winner was Joseph Drouhin's Grand cru 1959 Chambolle-Musigny; the Eyrie came in a very close second.