2016 Winter's Hill Pinot Gris Estate Willamette Valley Oregon 750 ml

The best Pinot Gris from Oregon can rival the most iconic whites of Alsace. The grape, a mirror image of Italy’s Pinot Grigio, is a versatile and aromatic stunner. Today, the Winter’s Hill 2016 Pinot Gris is ready to best its European counterparts with this white that bursts with expansive, generous flavors of peach, apricot, and lemon zest. 

For a long time, the Willamette Valley was almost exclusively synonymous with world-class Pinot Noir—but producers like the Gladhart family, who crafted this outrageously delicious wine at their Winter’s Hill estate, have raised the profile of Pinot Gris in Oregon to the vinous stratosphere. Peter and Emily Gladhart have been championing this grape since 1990, when growing Pinot Noir in the Dundee Hills wasn’t nearly as economically reliable as it is today. Diversification in the vineyard was a safe bet, so the Gladharts planted some Pinot Gris.

As with neighboring Domaine Serene and White Rose, the Winter’s Hill Estate is stunning. It’s perched 525 to 700 feet above Stoller, and includes a lovingly tended 35 acres of vines—on a farm of 150 acres—surrounded by fir and oak forests. And like so many of the Willamette Valley’s top producers, Peter continues to farm Winter’s Hill himself, alongside the expert aid of a small six-person crew. It’s a hands-on labor of love, with the entirety of the pruning, training, shoot thinning, and crop reduction accomplished by hand. Even the harvest is resolutely old-school, with the grapes being snipped from their vines with small clippers and gently placed into 5-gallon buckets in order to ensure that every last berry arrives at the winery intact.

Today’s 2016 release stands toe-to-toe with the gold standard of Pinot Gris, with a sub-$20 price tag the French can’t match. 

The 2016 Pinot Gris is a wine of shimmering clarity, an Alsace-inspired wine that is nonetheless wholly tied to its Pacific Northwest origins. In his 90-point review for Vinous, Josh Raynolds called out its “juicy and lively” presence on the palate, its “fresh citrus and orchard fruit flavors and a hint of bitter peach pit,” as well as its “solid grip” and “citrusy persistence” on the finish. Wine Enthusiast, in a recent article recommending standout crisp whites from around the world, specifically recommended this 2016 Winter’s Hill Pinot Gris, calling it “clean and fresh, mountain spring over rock, with green apple and jicama fruit.” They loved its “tension…it’s well-defined and taut through the finish.”

This is a wine of pedigree, idiosyncrasy, and hand-made attention. It represents not just the best of Willamette Valley white wine, but it’s also quite possibly one of the greatest values in American wine today. Handmade gems like this rarely deliver the kind of exuberant pleasure that this one does with immediacy.