La Crema Willamette Valley Pinot Noir Oregon Red Wine

In our September 2026 checks, six stores put this Oregon Pinot Noir between $30.99 and $79.99. The Willamette Valley on the label is a stretch of Oregon that runs more than a hundred miles and holds many hillside sites, so the valley name marks where the grapes grew, while a smaller area or a single vineyard would tell you more about the soil, the elevation and the wind. The Coast Range to the west blocks much of the Pacific weather and the Cascades separate the valley from the drier country to the east, which keeps the growing season cool. Federal recognition of the valley dates to 1983, and eleven smaller areas now sit inside its boundary.

2 shoppers have rated it, averaging 4.5 out of five, which lands below the 4.71 median for the wines we track. La Crema says its winery was founded in 1979 in Sonoma County's Russian River Valley and is now part of Jackson Family Wines, so that founding belongs to the California company rather than to this Oregon bottle. For the grape, category guides describe red cherry, berry and plum, with lighter color and softer tannin than Cabernet Sauvignon.

La Crema's product page for the current vintage gives numbers the entry above did not have: the wine finishes at 14.5 percent alcohol. The producer's own tasting note describes savory violets opening to raspberry, cranberry and orange zest, moving into supple tannins with a cedar note, and the winery sums up the style in three words: “Sincere. Delicate. Nuanced.” Winemaker Craig McAllister's team hand-sorts and destems the fruit before a cold soak of three to five days, the same process the winery states it uses for its California Pinot Noir. La Crema's own regional page for the valley credits three soil types across the eleven sub-AVAs, among them the volcanic Jory soil, known for bright red fruit, and windblown Laurelwood soil, known for rounder tannin; the producer does not say which soils feed this particular bottling.

Our call: this suits a shopper who wants a named, federally recognized valley and a documented process behind the bottle; the producer names the Willamette Valley's eleven sub-AVAs and states the fruit is hand-sorted, destemmed and cold-soaked before fermentation. Pass if two ratings are not enough to trust; the average here is a start, not a reputation, and it already sits below the median for the wines we track.

The Grocery Store Wine Desk · written Sep 16, 2026 from our research file for this wine. Numbers reflect our latest checks.