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Life had until recently kept me away from vineyards. My last vineyard visit was in 2024 when we worked in a winery for a week in Priorat, Spain. Recently, we managed to squeeze in four fabulous winery visits in the beautiful Willamette Valley in Oregon.
The last time we visited Willamette was in the spring of 2024, when we were warmly received. On that trip I got to spend a couple hours with Ken Wright of Ken Wright Cellars. I remember standing in the vineyard at the top of a hill while Ken seamlessly highlighted all the subregions’ key characteristics for me. As a first-time visitor, overlooking the Valley from this vantage point helped me to put my learned theory into place and paint a clearer picture of the region.
This visit’s reception was no different. This time it was a couple hours with Mark Vlossak, founder of St Innocent Winery. The visit owes thanks to Alexander Stoffel, who also writes a Substack called Wine Missives (check it out here), and to Carla Bauer from International Cellars, the importing agency in Calgary. My time with Mark transported me mentally through the power of storytelling as he related his personal wine evolution.
His father, John Innocent Vlossak, introduced him to wine at the age of seven. He once demanded to taste “the good wine” his father poured for himself, instead of the lower quality wine presented to Mark. He liked it.
When Mark moved to Oregon in 1980, he had already developed a taste for French Champagne. Soon after, a highly regarded American winemaker, Andre Tchelistcheff, is quoted in Bon Appetit saying, “The greatest sparkling wine in America will be made in Oregon, not California, because it is the right place to grow Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, the grapes of Champagne.” Mark set his sights on just that. After apprenticing under Fred Arterberry Jr, the first person to make Oregon sparkling, Mark founded St. Innocent Winery in 1988.
After my visit with Mark, I told Carla I will never think of wine the same again!
How could that be?
Good question. And of course I am exaggerating, but I have been reflecting on it since.
The theme that keeps rising to the top of my mental churning is vision – how the people and wineries I visited all had the common theme of their own vision.
This led me to learning about one of the Oregon wine pioneers, David Lett. He established his vineyards in what is now Dundee subregion in 1965. He was only 25 years old when he arrived, and he chose to plant his flag in Pinot Noir. This was HIS vision - but to put Willamette Valley wine on the map, THAT was inadvertent.
How can that be done inadvertently?
David’s 1975 Pinot Noir made the top 10 in a blind tasting with some of the world’s finest Pinot Noir’s, including from Burgundy, at the 1979 Gault-Millau French Wine Olympiad. This was a competition that he did not enter. His wines were submitted by Becky Wasserman, an influential American wine exporter based in Burgundy. David wasn’t even aware that they were entered. Becky, luckily, took liberties.
What was in the Willamette region when David Lett arrived?
This is where he clearly could visualize his idea where others could not. The region had been orchard country until it was devasted by the Columbus Day storm in the early 1960’s. The damage led many orchard owners to cease operations. In 1965 David bought a derelict orchard, but the lack of an established wine industry made it difficult for Lett to get financing to build a winemaking facility. Luckily, he was able to rent space cheaply in the old Swift and Co turkey processing plant in McMinnville. And just like that Eyrie Vineyards was born, and the rest is history.
Coincidentally the first winery I visited, Stoller Family Estate, has a past rooted in turkeys too.
You are surely making this up. Was that Stoller’s vision?
As I have mentioned many times – I never need to make things up … the wine world comes up with quirky stories naturally! Growing up in Dayton, Oregon, the late Bill Stoller was surrounded by what would eventually become the Dundee wine subregion. His father and uncle had purchased a farm in 1943 to raise turkeys, and raise turkeys they did. At peak operation, nearly 700,000 free-range turkeys were reared at one time.
But let’s back up. Before wine, Bill co-founded Express Employment Professionals, a staffing firm. He, like Lett, had his sights on Burgundy grapes. So he attended wine classes, travelled to Burgundy, and eventually invested in a vineyard and a winery.
These steps revealed to him the potential the family land had for grape growing. In 1993, when the family property went up for sale, he bought it and converted the Stoller “turkey property” to Stoller Family Estate. Michelle Kaufmann, our host at Stoller, shared with us how Bill, who passed suddenly in 2025, had a 200-year vision for Stoller. She explained that to last that long “we must take care of our land, our people, and our community.” An empowering concept for Stoller employees.
I love that Bill went to Burgundy seemingly as a reconnaissance mission.
Yes, Burgundy has been making wine for centuries. In fact, our other two stops in Willamette were wineries whose “mother companies” we previously visited in Burgundy in 2022 - Maison Louis Jadot and Joseph Drouhin, whose Oregon wineries go by Résonance and Domaine Drouhin respectively. Both wineries have been making wine in France for over a hundred years. As Burgundy is the native homeland of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, Oregon is a natural expansion territory for them.
Another ah-ha moment for me was that for both these wine houses, there is remarkable consistency in wine styles between their Oregon and Burgundy wines. Both producers poured us some of their French wines alongside their Oregon wines.
Makes sense to me! Likely part of their vision!
Precisely! For example, the Drouhin wines are the definition of elegance. Their wines from both continents are extremely harmonious and balanced. Their vision is their consistent wine style – so the people who buy their wines will know exactly what to expect.
I am now having visions of a glass of wine!
Yes, let’s waste no more time. Scroll down for the check out the featured wine, the Domaine Drouhin Rose Rock Chardonnay.
I’d also like to thank others who were not directly mentioned above for helping me make this happen! For the Stoller visit - Kristine Demers from A.C. Wine Syndicate and Evan Rose from Stoller. Alana Fontaine at St. Innocent. For the Domaine Drouhin visit - Chelsey Coulson from Pacific Wine & Spirits and Kenneth Lukhard from Domaine Drouhin. Carla Bauer and Thibault Marquis for the Résonance visit.
(Please note that as always, no wines were given to me. While my tastings at all wineries were comp-ed, I purchased a minimum of 2 bottles at each winery to compensate).
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Drouhin Rose Rock Chardonnay 2024 from Eola-Amity Hills, Willamette Valley, Oregon, USA
Style: Medium body mineral focused white wine
Variety(ies): 100% Chardonnay
This elegant wine has citrus notes of lemon, lime, and grapefruit, as well as white peach, wet stones, and saline with a hint of cream. This dynamic wine has intensity on both the nose and palate, and a very long finish.
Best pairings: Miso-glazed black cod with citrus, Dungeness crab with brown butter, lemon and green onion, Fish Tacos with grapefruit-lime slaw, Leek and bacon quiche, Lemon asparagus and parmesan soup Cheeses: Comté, Gruyère and Manchego.
Serving Temperature: 6 - 8 degrees Celsius
Serving Tips: Enjoy
Price: ~$49 Cdn
Relevant Shades of Grape links: Keep scrolling
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LINKS TO RELEVANT PAST SHADES OF GRAPE ARTICLES:
SOURCES:
Eyrie Vineyards, no date. Envisioning: The search for site. [online] Available at: [Accessed 24 September 2026].
Eyrie Vineyards, 1996. Land Use Law and the Success of the Dundee Hills: June 1996 – McCall Society. Speech by David Lett. [online] Available at: Eyrie Vineyards PDF [Accessed 24 September 2026].
Harding, J. and Robinson, J., 2023. The Oxford companion to wine. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Louis Jadot, no date. Boutique Louis Jadot. [online] Available at: Louis Jadot online boutique [Accessed 24 September 2026].
Oregon Wine Board, no date. Oregon wine history. [online] Available at: Oregon Wine Board – Oregon Wine History [Accessed 24 September 2026].
Oregon Wine Press, 2025. In Memoriam: Bill Stoller. [online] Available at: Oregon Wine Press article [Accessed 24 September 2026].
St. Innocent Wine, no date. History. [online] Available at: St. Innocent Wine history [Accessed 24 September 2026].
Stoller Family Estate, no date. About. [online] Available at: Stoller Family Estate – About [Accessed 24 September 2026].
Stoller Wine Group, no date. About. [online] Available at: Stoller Wine Group – About [Accessed 24 September 2026].
The Dundee, 2021. Stoller Estate Q and A with Michelle Kaufman. [online] Available at: The Dundee article [Accessed 24 September 2026].
Wine & Spirit Education Trust, 2025. D3: Wines of the World – An accompaniment to the WSET Level 4 Diploma in Wines. Version 1.2. London: Wine & Spirit Education Trust.
Willamette Week, 2014. One day in 1979: Becky Wasserman takes home two bottles from an upstart Oregon winery…. [online] Available at: Willamette Week article [Accessed 24 September 2026].