My Master List of Top Willamette Valley Wineries

Travel, Wine Tourism, and Restaurants Forum
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Willamette Valley Wineries Master List - My Top 20

I get a lot of help from this forum for international wines, especially old world French and Italian vintages, and I want to share my expertise on Willamette Valley. Oregon is my home and where I work, I run a tour company and when I’m not bringing clients to my favorites, I am regularly trying new spots. The Willamette Valley now has +700 wineries, these are my top producers, hopefully it helps some of you in the future if you ever visit the region, or want to add more Oregon wines to the cellar.

Note that while the Willamette Valley is a very large swath of Oregon, all the top quality producers are in the Northwest corner in the following AVAs - Dundee Hills, Yamhill-Carlton, Chehalem Mountains, Ribbon Ridge, Eola-Amity, Van Duzer

We produce some of the best Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in the world, that’s really it. While there is also a large presence of Riesling, Pinot Gris, and even Gruner, Gamay, Syrah and others - The terroir really is optimized for chard and pinot.

This list is based on two factors, wine quality and tasting experience. Full disclaimer, I am biased towards producers of Pinot Noir that go for a more restrained, light-medium bodied approach. Same applies to Chardonnay. Though a good amount of wineries on this list do a great job with bigger-bodied pinots and chards.

The Master List (No particular order)

1. Abbott Claim

  • The tasting experience is in a barrel cave with bites of caviar. Elevated, beautiful, incredible hospitality and each wine is a treat. About $95 tasting fee
  • Wines are elegant, complex, long finish and some of the best expressions of Willamette Valley I’ve ever tried. Their bottles are what I personally splurge on.

2. Nicolas-Jay

  • The tasting experience starts with a warm greeting and history lesson on how this project got started. Their tasting room is small, minimalist, and the wine flight is excellent from start to finish, paired with local bites of cheeses. Tasting fee $40 and up depending on option.
  • Wines are very French in style, the co founder comes from a French winemaking family. No whole cluster, very selective in what fruit is sourced.

3. Granville

  • Small boutique tasting room with incredible view, tucked away in Dundee Hills. Unpretentious, with wines that hit way above their weight. Around $50 tasting fee.
  • Criminally underrated wine, I mean criminally! A lot medium-bodied wine profiles, yet many of their wines show great restraint and elegance. Huge fan of what they are doing.

4. Sequitur

  • Beautiful Japanese-style tasting room tucked away in Ribbon Ridge. This is a project by the Etzel Family, behind Beaux Freres and consultants to many other wineries in the region. Tasting fee $50
  • Honest case for this behind the best small production wine project in the region. Many of the wines I’d describe as more medium-bodied, really just an incredible portfolio of pinot vintages.

5. Bergstrom

  • Tasting experience is a small house on Warden Hill Road (kind of the epicenter of the Oregon wine scene). Great display in hospitality, plenty of other wineries within a 5 minute drive. Great lunch option as well. Tasting fee $50
  • Their wines consistently score very well with critics. Hard to ignore their portfolio, great range of both light and big bodied pinots and chards.

6. Celestial Hill

  • This is my ultimate HIDDEN GEM, book the private estate vineyard tasting with the owner Chris. Very intimate and tucked away. Organic vineyards with farm animals. This is a consistent favorite for my wine tour guests just because of the experience with Chris. A bit of a further drive. Tasting fee is $40
  • A lot of their pinots have a bolder expression, lots of tannic and dark earthy currents.

7. Lingua Franca

  • Small, elevated tasting room in Eola-Amity AVA, great hospitality and an a top-notch wine flight. tasting fees around $50.
  • Excellent French style winemaking, scoring very well among critics. If you can get your hands on their 2017 vintage do it.

8. Antica Terra

  • You will have a blast, if you are looking to splurge, do the ‘A Very Nice Lunch’ experience. Intimate, ecclecitc tasting room, they have a cultish following and for good reason. Lunch is like 5 or 6 courses or great farm-to-table plates, and has a flight of old world and Eola-Amity Hills vintages. $295 for lunch
  • Wine are always so earthy and complex, scoring really well with critics, often light to medium-bodied profiles. Huge fan.

9. Brick House

  • HIDDEN GEM, this honestly may be the best bang-for-your-buck wine and tasting experience in Willamette. Its an ecclectic indoor outdoor space in Ribbon Ridge. $30 tasting
  • Really exceptional pinot program, range from light to full bodied, their vineyard yields an almost saline-ocean profile, I love their wines.

10. Resonance

  • This is a crowd pleaser, I take tour guests here more than any other winery on the list. Specifically their Carlton tasting room, a charming wood clad tasting room situated in an oak grove with an incredible view.
  • Very strong French connections, the owners even have fruit sourced from France and blended with their Oregon fruit. Some of my favorite Oregon pinots I’ve every enjoyed.

11. Alexana

  • Another underrated project in my opinion. They have a gogreous tasting room in the Dundee Hills. The founder has two other well received wine projects in Napa and Argentina. You can do a flight tasting of all three wineries which is good fun. $50-150 tasting experiences
  • One of my favorite Oregon Riesling ever. Their whites are stunning, mineral driven, typically light-medium bodied.

12. Purple Hands

  • Book at their Haakon/lenai vineyard tasting room, tucked away in Dundee Hills, great view. They have great hospitality and do single vineyard flights. The owner is Cody Wright, son of Ken Wright the Oregon wine pioneer. Very low intervention winemaking, whole cluster fermentation. Tasting fee is $50
  • This is a great stop if you are looking for bolder pinots, they have really great chards that are scoring well too.

13. Penner-Ash

  • A very classic Willamette wine estate, great views and hospitality. tasting is around $60 i believe.
  • Wines have range, tend to be more savory. Had a 20+ year old pinot that was top-notch.

14. Beaux Freres

  • Classic, excellent Oregon wine by the Etzel family. If you know Willamette Valley, you’ve heard their names. Tasting experience is in laid back building converted from an old barn. $65 tasting last i checked
  • Medium-full bodied Ribbon Ridge wines, dark fruits, earthy and great tannin structure. Always scoring great with critics

15. Soter

  • Soter has a great tasting room expereince, its a bit more commercial and popular, but still very down-to-earth. I honestly recommend that if you go, to do their multi-course lunch, around $175
  • A lot of their portfolio I’d classify as medium-bodied, very much capturing that earthy dark fruit aspect of Yamhill-Carlton AVA.

16. Ghost Hill Cellars

  • HIDDEN GEM, very laid back tasting, cativating story, beautiful view. They host a lot of events such as food cart sunset tasting. Very fun. $30 tasting fee
  • Their wines are awesome, typically on the bolder side, definitely age worthy. I tried a 15 year old Ghost Hill pinot recently that was banging.

17. ROCO

  • Unpretentious, laid-back, affordable, and good wine. Their sparkling won #1 wine for 2023 I think. Great stop to add in.
  • They’ve been around awhile and know how to make good Oregon wines. Lots of different varietals.

18. Alloro

  • Really an excellent option for both wine and food. More elevated, high-end, there is a strong Italian connection. its also closer to Portland. $45 tasting fee, but I’d go for their multi-course dinners, or lunch options.
  • Very expressive and earthy wines, lots of range. Scoring well with critics.

19. Benza

  • HIDDEN GEM, you taste at a small house on a vineyard, chickens and farm animals running around, laid back and tucked away in Chehalem Mountains. $40 tasting fee
  • Wines tend to be more medium-big bodied, though I’ve had really excellent sparkling and Syrah here as well. This is in the ‘Laurelwood District’ which is a small portion of Chehalem Mountains AVA, shows very earthy and dark fruit pinot.

20. Rodeo Hills

  • Another small production project by the Etzel family. Do the Long Lunch with Jared Etzel the winemaker. $150 per person.
  • Wines show a great expression of the Jory soil of Dundee Hills, spice, red fruit etc. Some of the best Oregon sparkling I’ve had as well.

Honorable Mention: Lichtenwalter

  • HIDDEN GEM, this experience you are tasting on the back porch of the owner, Micheal. Cannot recommend this enough. He does 0 advertising and takes guests by appointment only. Laid back and personal. Tasting fee is $40
  • Medium-full bodied Ribbon Ridge wines, dark fruits and great tannin structure.

Hope this list can be of some use to those traveling to Willamette Valley. Interested to hear what others may insert into the list. If you’d like to check out my tour company or are traveling to the area and want advice, feel free to reach out anytime - Hidden Vineyards Wine Tours

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Following. Heading there in July.

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Seems to be missing all the board favorites!

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Well it is his top 20, but it’s obv not the WV actual top 20. Including Penner-Ash proves that.

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This is definitely a list where I tried to synthesize the wine + tasting room experience, so take it with a grain of salt. So many more I’d like to keep naming, but it’d turn into a list of 100. I will inevitably leave out some greats. A few more I definitely want to shoutout while I’m here:

  • Arabilis
  • Domaine Divio
  • Jachter
  • Cristom
  • Norris
  • Archery Summit
  • Compris
  • Tresori
  • Ambar
  • Anacreon
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Wineries I would add:

Kelley Fox
Walter Scott
Goodfellow
Patricia Green

Edited to add: this is both for quality of wines made and for quality of the visit to the winery. Top notch in both categories for all four here

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Would’ve had Walter Scott on there I love their wine, the only problem being they don’t offer tasting anymore : (

Patricia Green is great value for quality, really great hospitality, just a bit of an underwhelming tasting room.

Same deal with Goodfellow, great wine, but its in downtown McMinnville, hard to bring wine tour guests there, but I think most people on this forum would really enjoy it.

Kelly Fox is still on my list!

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Took me a minute but now I understand, you do wine tours in WV so you are posting to drum up business. If the tasting rooms are “underwhelming” they don’t fit your business model regardless of the quality of wines.

So why isn’t Domaine Serene #1 in your list since their tasting room is very nice?

Most folks here care about the wine and supporting the winery, not about the tours.

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The man is entitled to his opinions, and he knows what works for his business. I would suggest becoming a Berserker Biz and leaning into it a little more.

And Welcome!

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Hey these recommendations are cheaper than Napa

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It’s a shame Cameron doesn’t offer tastings. I would put Drouhin right up there- Tasting room offers wines from both their Burgundy operation as well as their sites in Oregon so you get a good comparison and contrast to the two countries wines. The vine spacing there is similar to what they do in France so its an interesting place to stop.

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Maybe just me, but I’d look for the tour guide that can get me into tastings with wineries that don’t have tasting rooms and don’t always offer tastings- more intimate private tastings in production settings are much more my jam.

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I’d agree. Not sure why I would need to hire someone to take me to wineries that I can just book on my own

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Lots of reasons,most notably the 700+ wineries mentioned in the OP. A service like this can help you narrow down the types of experiences you want. Full vineyard? Vistas? Lunch options? Barrel tastings?
Many people that want to visit don’t have the knowledge base or time to research. Berserkers are different

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Yeah, of course. I’m not wondering why someone would use this service, I’m wondering about myself and others on this board. We are on this board, after all…

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There’s a glut of lurkers around here that don’t fit the typical Berserker mold. Probably why they are lurkers.

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That’s fair, but not really my concern. I was just agreeing with Scott. I have no problem with the OP and what he’s doing, just not a service I would personally use, but I drink a good amount of Oregon wine already, not only producers from this board, though I am a huge fan of many of them.

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Regardless, I had not heard of some of these producers, so always nice to learn about new ones.

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Tasting at Goodfellow is such a great experience. Beats the heck out of a large tasting room with some random employee leading the tasting- thats for going to Napa or Bordeaux. Part of the joy of tasting in Willamette is that you can be tasting with someone deeply involved in the process of making the wine.

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That’s for going anywhere if you don’t have connections. Otherwise, tasting is with the winemaker or someone else deeply involved in the process. I haven’t been to BDX, but I haven’t tasted in Napa with anyone but the winemaker.