Forest Grove pinot noir claim still stirring controversy

A fight over the history of Oregon’s signature wine grape is afoot

Jason Bull showed off vines in 2009, shortly after Forest Grove adopted a new slogan celebrating Charles Coury, who planted pinot noir grapes at the vineyard in the 1960s. Chase Allgood / News-Times

Forest Grove’s “branding” effort to increase its profile seems to be working, but maybe not as smoothly as city leaders had planned.

The new slogan “Forest Grove: Where Oregon pinot was born” was meant to evoke the Willamette Valley’s favorite grape, pinot noir, and Forest Grove’s central role in its development as a signature Oregon product.

But the branding effort hasn’t been met with universal praise. On Saturday, a pair of winemakers got on KXL radio to express their frustrations with the slogan, which they say misrepresents Oregon wine history.

One of those guests, Dyson DeMara, heads up Hillcrest Vineyards, the Roseburg winery founded by Richard Sommer, thought to be the first man to plant pinot noir vines in Oregon. The other, Jason Lett, is the son of David Lett, known as “Papa Pinot,” whose Eyrie Vineyards in Dundee popularized the idea of Oregon’s Willamette Valley as the home to world-class pinot.

But Forest Grove claims a third rail in the pinot story: Charles Coury, who planted pinot noir grapes north of the city on land now operated as David Hill Winery and Vineyard.

Coury, Lett and Sommer are all dead. But their legacy lives on in a trio of slogans that claim pinot firsts.

Hillcrest Claims the first pinot in Oregon. Eyrie claims the first pinot in the Willamette Valley.

But Jeff King, Forest Grove’s economic development coordinator, said the city’s connection to Coury affords it a serving of pinot history as well.

“We’re not saying we're the first to ever plant or produce a bottle of pinot,” King said. “We're talking about Coury who was the one to spark the industry.”

Difficult details
Coury, Sommer and Lett all went to school at the University of California, Davis, where they learned from professors steeped in the tradition of Napa Valley, California winemaking.

Everyone agrees that each man has a claim to the pinot throne, but sorting out who did what first, depends on who you talk to (and how you phrase the question).

Don Jones, who helped research Coury’s pinot history, says the city’s slogan is claiming it a spot in the Oregon pinot story by highlighting that Coury likely planted pinot noir at what’s now David Hill before Lett planted at Eyrie.

That’s after Sommer planted, but the city’s staking its claim on the birth of “Oregon pinot” as something inherently rooted in the Willamette Valley. In that way, King and Jones say they’re not striking at Sommer’s heritage.

“If it creates interest for all three wineries, that’s wonderful,” King said. “If all three use it, that's fine. They're all responsible for different aspects of the pinot story.”

DeMara agrees that pumping Oregon’s pinot heritage is a good thing, but the city’s slogan goes too far.

“Anything that's good for wine is good for everybody," DeMara said. “But being that that statement is so grossly inaccurate and researched in a poor way it’s gone from trying to reach out to throwing walls up.”

Those walls worry Adam Campbell, owner and winemaker at Elk Cove Vineyards in Gaston.