King Estate Pinot Gris Willamette Valley 2019

In Oregon, the path to success while not easy is well trod. Make great Pinot Noir, (easier said than done, especially 30 years ago) build your winery and then finance the rest of your wine program around that.

But one winery chose a slightly different path. Always a wine lover and with two small parcels that he already owned, Ed King hit pay dirt one day while purchasing hay for his horses by discovering an ideal 600-acre cattle ranch near Eugene, Oregon.

Because their land was further south than most of the Willamette Valley wine pioneers before them, Pinot Noir might have been an easy cash cow, but Pinot Gris was the ideal grape for the terroir and climate.

Never taking the easy way out, the family committed themselves to sustainable farming, becoming the first biodynamic winery in the state — a novel concept at the time that has since become the norm for all the region’s top estates. By 1994, they had rigorously matched each tiny parcel to its perfect clone – creating the most clonally diverse soil and climate-matched vineyard in Oregon.