This wine grape isn’t taken seriously, but it makes award-winning wine

King Estate Pinot Gris

Willamette Valley, Oregon

$20.89 13.5% alcohol

PLCB Item #9903

Sale price through July 6 (regularly $22.89)

Pinot gris is not taken as seriously as a fine wine grape, due in part to the ubiquity of cheap and cheerful Italian pinot grigio. The lowest priced of these Italian wines can be quite flavorless and their popularity has devalued the entire category to some degree.

But pinot gris has the capacity to make far tastier wines. Some of the best made in the U.S. are grown in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, where pinot gris thrives alongside its darker cousin pinot noir (of which pinot gris is a green mutation), producing dry, unoaked white wines that have a flavor profile of yellow fruits like apples and pears, peaches and plums.

In the early days of the fine wine revolution in California, it became apparent that of the world’s prestige wine grapes, there was one that was not ideally suited for growing in the Golden State; pinot noir is native to the Burgundy region of central France, a place that is colder, cloudier, and rainier in comparison.

In the late ’70s and early ‘80s, a number of eccentric pinot noir purists moved north seeking a more suitable climate and found success in the Willamette Valley, just south of Portland, Oregon. It wasn’t long before their red pinot noirs were turning heads and winning coveted awards, but the region didn’t really come into its own until it began making solid white wines as well.

The first green grape plantings were mostly of chardonnay, also from Burgundy. But in the decades since, it has been pinot gris that has had the most success in making Oregon’s white wines. This example is made by one of the region’s largest wineries that remains family-owned.

What is so noticeably different from the more neutral Italian style is that this fruit, grown at cool sites at high elevation, is riper at harvest, which amplifies the orchard-fresh fruit flavors of ripe Bosc pears and white peaches, and adds a faint whiff of florals, like the subtle scent of jasmine tea.

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