Tualatin Hills AVA wineries and tasting rooms

Tualatin Hills is the largest of the Willamette Valley's sub-AVAs by acreage, sprawling roughly 144,000 acres west of Portland, though only a fraction of that is planted, since the federal designation caps commercial vineyards at 1,000 feet and the practical ceiling sits closer to that number than most growers would like. Three winery principals petitioned together: Montinore Estate's Rudy Marchesi, Apolloni Vineyards' Alfredo Apolloni, and David Hill Vineyard and Winery's Mike Kuenz. The AVA became official in 2020 alongside its neighbor, Laurelwood District.

The soil here shares its headline material with Laurelwood District next door: Laurelwood series loess over basalt, in patches rather than blanketing the whole AVA, plus Kinton and Cornelius soils that round out the mix. What genuinely sets Tualatin Hills apart is the swing between day and night: growing-season temperatures here move by nearly 24 degrees Fahrenheit on average, a wider gap than most of the surrounding valley, which slows sugar development and helps hold onto acidity through a long ripening season.

Montinore and Apolloni are both still farming the ground their founders petitioned to protect, and David Hill now bottles a wine labeled specifically with the AVA's name: a small, direct way of making the case that this is its own place within the Willamette Valley, not just the closest wine country gets to Portland.