Slide Show: Boundaries for Taste
The wine that Portland Monthly wine critic Conde Cox picked as the best Oregon wine to be released this year began its life as a grape vine planted in 1994. But it might not have existed at all without a law passed in 1973.
Photography by Jesse Champlin
As Cox describes it, the Archery Hills ‘Red Hills Estate’ 2006 Pinot Noir is like “a steel fist in a velvet glove.” With tart cherry flavors, mouthwatering tannins, and an unusually high alcohol content due to the hot growing season of 2006, this wine
Photography by Jesse Champlin
But it might never have been made at all had the land where the wine’s grapes grew and the water that nourished the vines not been protected by Oregon’s major statewide land-use law, Oregon Senate Bill 100, passed in 1973.
Photography by The Oregon Historical Society
For Archery Hills’ 39-year-old winemaker Anna Matzinger, the Red Hills Estate vineyard that produced our winning wine is “a little secret”—not necessarily the land that produces grapes to please the masses, but her personal favorite. Like an artist’s
Photography by Jesse Champlin
Red Hills Estate sits atop a hill and faces south and east. It is exposed to lots of sun and is one of our windier sites, Anna says. It has a gently sloping grade with amazing views. The all-important soil the vines are planted in is called “jory,” a
Photography by Andrea Johnson for Archery Summit Vineyards
The 28-acre Red Hills Estate lies in the Dundee Hills appellation, Oregon’s first “micro-AVA” (American Viticultural Area), a smaller area that is both geologically and climatically distinct from the larger Willamette Valley AVA Illustrations by Portland Monthly Magazine
The hills’ distinctive loam, created by basaltic flows that engulfed the region 15 million years ago but later washed away in the great Missoula Floods of 15,000 years ago, has become the perfect place for growing grapes. It was in the Red Hills, not
Illustrations by Google Earth
Three years later, Senate Bill 100 led to the adoption of goals for all of Oregon’s land, such as the protection of scenic and agricultural resources. That, in turn, led every city in Oregon to mandate an urban growth boundary.
Illustrations by Portland Monthly Magazine
But Red Hills Estate is less than two miles from Dundee and could easily have become populated with people’s homes or small “farmettes” if Oregon hadn’t adopted protections for the land.
In 1973, thanks to the urging and salesmanship of Governo
Illustrations by Portland Monthly Magazine
Neither the owners nor the staff of Archery Summit—nor most of the other winemakers who produced the Willamette Valley wines our wine critic selected as this year’s best—believe Red Hills Estate would have necessarily become a McMansion subdivision wi
Photography by Hawks View Cellars
And so, more than 40 years since pinot noir pioneer David Lett planted his first grapes, a $1 billion wine industry has blossomed in the Willamette Valley, home to Portland Monthly’s picks of the year.
Photography by Hawks View Cellars
