a personDavid Lett
Left UC Davis in 1964 with a degree and a plan to grow pinot noir outside Burgundy, and in 1965 planted it in the Willamette Valley — against the advice of every professor he had.
The story Cited
His 1975 Eyrie South Block Reserve placed tenth in a 1979 Paris tasting of pinot noir. Robert Drouhin ran the comparison again in Beaune in 1980, where it came second by a fraction to one of his own wines, and Burgundy took Oregon seriously from then on.
Facts
| role | grower |
|---|---|
| country | United States |
| region | Willamette Valley, Oregon |
| confidence | high · updated 2026-09-16 |
Its kin
cellarThe Eyrie VineyardsThe winery he founded.and of this page it says: Who planted it.regionWillamette ValleyThe valley he bet on.and of this page it says: Who planted the first pinot noir here and argued for the rest.the vinePinot grisAnd the first American planting of it.
Who points back
Sources
Where it came from: Cited a source we name · Harvested pulled from an open dataset · Tradition what the tradition says, hedged · Inference this project's reasoning · Field somebody stood there. This record as JSON.