North Williamette Valley - Eola-Amity Hills- established 2006

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Amity Hills Vineyards

About Eola-Amity Hills

Oregon has a new American Viticultural Area: the Eola-Amity Hills. This is one of six new appellations in the north Willamette Valley. Only the Chehalem Mountains has yet to get full approval. Eola-Amity is one of the Williamette Valley's most respected growing areas and is also one of its least visited.

The Eola-Amity Hills is 15 miles long and six miles wide and stretches roughly from the town of Amity in the north to the capital city of Salem in the southeast.

Vineyard plantings date to the Oregon wine industry's early days between 1970 and 1975, with Myron Redford's Amity Vineyards one of the oldest.

The Eola-Amity Hills AVA, which was approved by the federal government this summer (July 17, 2006), is 37,900 acres with about 1,300 acres planted, primarily with Pinot Noir. A dozen wineries are in the Eola-Amity Hills, but many more purchase fruit from the appellation. Such vineyards as Canary Hill, Bethel Heights, Temperance Hill, Carter, Hoodview and Seven Springs are highly regarded by wineries to the north.

"This area has always grown some really good grapes," said Steve Doerner, winemaker for Cristom Vineyards, "and a lot of it has gone up north to Yamhill County. For some reason, we haven't attracted a lot of wineries. It's kind of surprising there aren't a lot more wineries down here. The grapes are as good as anywhere in the valley."

Part of that reason is location. The Eola-Amity Hills appellation is two-thirds in Polk County and one-third in Yamhill County and at the southern end of the north Willamette Valley. With such towns as Newberg, Dundee, Carlton and McMinnville between Portland and the Eola-Amity Hills, visitors don't often make it this far south.

Oh, what wines and wineries they are missing

Cristom, Bethel Heights, Witness Tree and Amity are four of the state's most respected wineries, producing Pinot Noirs that combine grace and power.

Ken Wright, owner of Ken Wright Cellars in Carlton, crafts a Canary Hill-designated Pinot Noir most years. The vineyard is in the very southern part of the appellation and is blessed with cooling afternoon winds.

"The berries are thinner skinned with lower tannins," Wright said. "Canary Hill tends to be very lush, very agreeable and approachable early in its life."

Ted Casteel, who owns Bethel Heights with his brother, winemaker Terry, said a key to Eola-Amity Hills Pinot Noir is the cool winds that come through the Van Duzer corridor, a gap in the Coast Range that provides a direct shot to the Pacific Ocean about 30 miles to the west.

"After 3 p.m. in the summer, sea breezes tend to reach us first," Casteel said. "We have longer periods of cooler temperatures, which we see as an advantage in terms of color of our wines and also a little more brightness and acidity that give balance."

In fact, the name Eola is derived from Aeolus, the Greek god of all winds.

Casteel, Bethel Heights' vineyard manager, said the Eola-Amity Hills is mainly old, exposed basalt, a soil type known as Nekia or Geldermain. This is shallow soil, and the resulting wines typically show darker fruit aromas and flavors.

The Casteel brothers and their families were living in Seattle in the 1970s and wanted to escape the big city, so they decided to move to rural Oregon to follow a dream of owning a vineyard and winery. Myron Redford told them about a vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills that was for sale.

"We decided to come and try our hand at it," Terry Casteel said. "It probably was the riskiest thing we've ever done in our lives. But it's been a good life."

Today Bethel Heights has 75 acres of vineyards, primarily planted with Pinot Noir, and is neighbors with such vineyards as Temperance Hill, Cristom and Witness Tree. Though this is the mostly densely planted part of the appellation, there still is room to grow.

Witness Tree, known for the tree in the middle of the property that was used as a surveyor's landmark in 1854, owns 49 acres of vineyards, primarily Pinot Noir with a bit of Viognier, Pinot Blanc, Chardonnay and Dolcetto. The vineyard is planted on several soil types, and these differences show up in various wines, with flavors ranging from dark fruit to bright, high-toned notes.

"It changes how the wines behave in quite dramatic fashions based on whether it's Nekia or Jory soil types," said Steven Westby, winemaker and vineyard manager. "You can walk 20 yards and taste two very different wines."

The first four AVAs (Dundee Hills, Ribbon Ridge, Yamhill-Carlton District and McMinnville) sailed through the federal government's appellation-approval process. However, Chehalem and the Eola Hills ran into problems because there are wineries with similar names (Eola Hills Wine Cellars and Chehalem).

This was an issue in California because there is a winery with the name Napa in it that wasn't using Napa Valley grapes. The good folks in the Napa Valley felt their name was being besmirched by this and worried consumers would think less of their products because of this renegade winery. So now the federal government is very sensitive to appellation names that have the same names as wineries. In fact, by rule the wineries would need to limit their wines to grapes only from the appellations that bear their names.

For Eola Hills Wine Cellars, this is a huge problem because the Rickreall, Ore., producer sources grapes from all over Oregon, as well as California. Thus, the name was changed to Eola-Amity Hills. This is a less-desirable name because the Eola Hills as a region has a long history of high-quality grapes. However, the Eola-Amity Hills name will work well for the region. Plus it makes the government and Eola Hills Wine Cellars happy.

Chehalem Mountain is a different issue. The wineries in that appellation have argued that Harry Peterson-Nedry should not be required to use only grapes from that appellation under the label. Everyone there gets along pretty well and nobody is worried that Harry will suddenly start buying bulk juice from Romania and put it under his Chehalem label.

Word on the, er, grapevine is that the federal government is weeks away from sorting this out and approving the AVA.

During the growing season, ocean breezes push through the Van Duzer Corridor in the Coastal maintaining a consistently cool climate that is the hallmark of all great Pinot Noir winegrowing regions. This climate, combined with the shallow, well-drained volcanic soils of the Nekia series that dominate this area, are the primary reasons the Eola Hills is emerging as one of the world’s most exciting winegrowing regions.

Appellation Maps

Eola-Amity Hills