Umpqua Valley AVA wineries and tasting rooms

Umpqua Valley became Oregon's second AVA in 1984, more than two decades after Richard Sommer planted HillCrest Vineyard here in 1961, the state's first post-Prohibition vinifera planting, four years ahead of David Lett's Pinot Noir up in the Willamette Valley. Sommer picked the spot on a hunch about the climate, later telling the Roseburg News-Review the valley was "blessed with a climate remarkably similar to the great wine growing regions of France."

The AVA's real character is its range: vineyards mostly sit above 1,000 feet, and the valley runs from a cooler, fog-influenced corridor near Elkton in the north to warmer ground around Roseburg itself, three distinct sub-zones inside one appellation. Brandborg Vineyard's Terry Brandborg has described driving through the equivalent of Burgundy, the Rhône, and Rioja in under an hour without leaving the valley.

HillCrest is still working the ground Sommer started on, in what's now the Umpqua Valley region. A local grower named Scott Henry also invented the vertical-shoot-positioning trellis system here, now used by vineyards worldwide to manage exactly this kind of variable sun and airflow, a quiet piece of viticultural engineering that started in this one valley and spread everywhere else.