Winery hotels & vineyard stays in Willamette Valley

The Willamette Valley runs a hundred miles south from Portland and is the reason Oregon is spoken of alongside Burgundy. Cool, wet winters and long dry summers on volcanic Jory and marine sedimentary soils give Pinot Noir a lighter, more savoury profile than California's, and the stays match the wine: farmhouse inns, vineyard cottages and estate guesthouses rather than resorts.

David Lett planted the valley's first Pinot Noir in 1965 on the reasoning that Oregon's latitude matched Burgundy's, and was vindicated in 1979 when his Eyrie Vineyards South Block Reserve placed in a Paris blind tasting. Eleven nested AVAs now describe the valley's soils and elevations — the Dundee Hills on red volcanic Jory, the Eola-Amity Hills cooled by wind through the Van Duzer Corridor, the marine sedimentary Ribbon Ridge and Chehalem Mountains. Roughly three-quarters of the valley's several hundred wineries produce fewer than 5,000 cases a year, so tasting here usually means talking to the person who made the wine. Pinot Gris, Chardonnay and increasingly Riesling and Gamay fill out the range. Harvest is late — late September into October, later than California — and the valley is at its most beautiful in that window, when the fog sits in the folds of the hills in the morning. McMinnville and Newberg are the practical bases; Portland is under an hour from the northern end.