The valley where the Oregon Trail ended became America's Burgundy. In 1965 David Lett planted the region's first Pinot Noir against the advice of the California experts, who judged the place too cold and too wet; at a Paris tasting in 1979 his Eyrie Vineyards pinot placed among fine Burgundies, and in 1987 the Burgundian house of Drouhin answered by buying the neighbouring hill.
The valley has kept the shape its founders gave it: family-scale estates rather than corporate ones, early and widely adopted sustainable-farming charters, and an identity built almost entirely on one grape — a pinot-first commitment unique in the United States, tempered by Pinot Gris and, increasingly, Chardonnay.