Knudsen, Erath & Argyle

Knudsen and Argyle are both Oregon pinots on our store shelves currently and Erath has been an old standby here for a long time.  Let's tie them all together.  All three are located in the Dundee Hills wine appellation within the larger Willamette Valley.  The very first commercial winery in Dundee Hills was Knudsen, established in 1975.  Very shortly thereafter Knudsen partnered with Erath to create the Knudsen-Erath wine company which produced great pinots until 1987.  Then Knudsen reverted to grower status and became a primary grape supplier to Erath.  Argyle is the most awarded winery in Oregon and when Knudsen re-created their family-named wine label in 2014, they did it using Argyle's winemaker.

Dundee Hills is home to forty-four wineries currently with half of them being household names to Oregon pinot lovers.  The three listed in our title are certainly among the best.  Located south of Portland in the northwestern part of the Willamette Valley, Dundee Hills is indeed a very special wine venue.  It lies at a higher elevation than most of the valley; has a maritime climate, courtesy of the Pacific Ocean; and it has Jory soil, three different clays with organic matter on top.  The appellation contains seven thousand acres with thirteen hundred currently in vines.

Oregon has the strictest wine laws in the country.  If a wine is labeled as a varietal, the wine in the bottle must be at least 90% of that varietal.  If a wine appellation is shown on a label, the contents must be 95% from that place.  If a label says "Oregon" it must be 100% Oregon wine.  This contrasts with California where only 75% has to be what the label says it is and 25% of the contents don't even have to be California wine.

Now here's what we learned about Oregon wines while researching the subject: The Willamette Valley appellation name is a legally protected product IN EUROPE!  It has PGI (Protected Geographical Indication) status due to both the uniqueness of the terroir and traditional winemaking and the stringency of Oregon's laws.  The only other American wine venue to be so protected is Napa Valley.  With this kind of protection in place, fraud and misrepresentation from parties unrelated to those places should not happen in Europe.