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Showcasing the best of
northwest wines and
the awareness of pacific
northwest wine regions.
Showcasing the best of northwest
wines and the awareness of pacific
northwest wine regions.
 
12 Oregon Pinot Noir Wines That Prove a 50-year-old Gamble Paid Off

12 Oregon Pinot Noir Wines That Prove a 50-year-old Gamble Paid Off




You could say that Oregon is a pinot noir bridge. The state's most celebrated and successful wine style could generally be classified as somewhere between the heady, earthy pinot noirs of Burgundy - the grape's ancestral home in France - and the fruity, jammy pinots of California.

Oregon itself, as a winemaking place, is suspended out there, too, proudly distanced from the more-established locales, independent and self-assured. That identity was not forged overnight. As with many places in the United States, grape-growing and winemaking in Oregon reach to the 19th century. But every state or specific region with a critical mass of wine production has a modern, readjusted date that indicates when things began to get serious, and commercial, and ... better.

For Oregon it was the 1960s, when a Californian planted riesling, pinot noir and other varieties in the Umpqua Valley, and then a few years later another Californian planted pinot noir in the Willamette Valley, which would become the state's largest and most-important region.

For the complete story see: Chicago Tribune