Willamette Valley Vineyards Pinot Gris

Pinot Gris and Pinot Grigio are the French and Italian names for the same grape, and grape guides say the French Gris name often points to a rounder, more textured style than the crisper, lighter Grigio bottlings. This label reads Pinot Gris, and names Willamette Valley, Oregon plainly. Regional guides describe that valley as a cool, roughly hundred-mile-long growing corridor set between the Coast Range and the Cascade foothills, an American Viticultural Area since 1983 that now holds eleven smaller nested regions. What the label does not narrow down is which of those smaller regions, or which vineyard, grew this particular fruit.

Willamette Valley Vineyards' own history page traces the grape on this label to a specific source: founder Jim Bernau says he got his first Pinot Gris cuttings through the pioneering work of David Lett at The Eyrie Vineyards, the winemaker credited with first bringing the grape to Oregon from France. The winery's page adds that Pinot Gris has since become Oregon's leading white wine.

The producer's own technical sheet for the 2024 vintage, matched to this current release, lists a harvest between September 27 and October 12, 2024, with grapes picked at 22.8 Brix and pressed as whole clusters. The finished wine comes in at 13.3 percent alcohol, fermented roughly five weeks in stainless steel tanks at 55 to 60 degrees, no oak used, then given time on the spent yeast before bottling. The winery's own tasting notes describe a pale lemon color with aromas of citrus zest, honeydew and apple, and a dry palate of pear, honeysuckle and lemongrass, finishing soft with a lingering acidity.

We do not have a shopper rating for this wine. In our September 2026 checks the bottle ranged from $18.99 to $29.99 across four stores.

Our call: a solid choice if a fully documented Oregon Pinot Gris, with a vintage matched harvest date, alcohol level and a traceable grape lineage back to Oregon's first plantings, is enough to go on. Pass if you want the crowd's confirmation or a single named vineyard behind the wine; no shopper rating has reached our record yet, and the origin here stays at the valley level rather than one estate or block.

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