History of Oregon wine

The history of Oregon wine production stretches back to before the state was incorporated. Settlers to the Oregon Territory planted grapes as early as the 1840s, however the production of wine has only been a significant industry in Oregon since the 1960s. Oregon wines first achieved significant critical notice in the late 1970s; in 2005, the industry sold 1.6 million cases of Oregon vintages with a retail value of USD $184.7 million. In 2015, there were 702 wineries and 28,034 acres of vitis vinifera planted

Grapes were first planted in the Oregon Territory in 1847 by Henderson Luelling, a horticulturist who traveled to the territory on the Oregon Trail. The first recorded winery, Valley View Vineyard was established in Jacksonville (in what is now the Rogue Valley AVA) in the 1850s by Peter Britt, several years before the state was founded in 1859. In the first Oregon census in 1860, wine production was listed at 11,800 liters (2,600 gallons), though it is certain that not all of this came from grapes.

In the 1880s, numerous immigrants to Southern Oregon experimented with various varietals, including Zinfandel, Riesling, and an unknown variety of Sauvignon. By 1899, Oregon vineyards yielded 2,694 tons of grapes. Five years later, a Forest Grove winemaker, Ernest Reuter, won a silver medal at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair The vineyard on which the grapes were grown was located on Wine Hill west of Forest Grove.

Wine production in Oregon, like elsewhere in the United States, shut down during the Prohibition era, but resumed in 1933. The Oregon wine industry remained small for several decades, and was dominated by fruit wines rather (including wines based on grapes other than Vitas vinifera), by that time the California wine industry, with its warmer climate, had come to dominate wine production in the United States. Only two Oregon wineries produced wine using V. vinifera through the middle of the century; both on a rather small scale.

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