McMinnville, Oregon
Denis Burger and Elaine McCall were looking for a piece of property to plant grapes on and learn about winegrowing from the ground up. On a wet, August weekend they opened up the classified section of the newspaper and spotted an ad that read “Land For Sale, Good For Grapes,” and they were off. The rain continued all the way until they turned off Highway 18 onto Oldsville Road. As they turned the corner approaching the property, a rainbow appeared over the hillside in front of them. The rain stopped. They had arrived. The site was not where they had been looking and was much larger than what was needed for their original plan, but as they explored their new patch of Yamhill County, they fell in love with the views, the hillsides, the little stream with its wildflowers on its bank that ran across the track, and they began making plans for a vineyard.
Slowly they acquired adjacent parcels of land, planting vineyards, and planning for a winery. Thanks to the collaborative nature of the Oregon wine industry, Denis was able to purchase Pinot Noir from a neighbor in the same viticultural region, Hyland Vineyards. He then made our first wine at Sokol Blosser Winery with assistance from their winemaker, Bob McRitchie. It was that first 1983 Pinot Noir that Denis took to the Steamboat Pinot Noir Conference where he met Stephen Cary, who the following year included it in the 1985 Burgundy Challenge. There it outcompeted the French burgundies in a blind tasting and took home top honors. Stephen later joined Yamhill Valley and spent 24 years as head winemaker.