Argyle Winery and Oregon Bubbles
Near Dundee, Oregon
Right in the heart of downtown Dundee, along Highway Ninety-Nine West, sits a winery that bet on something different, bubbles. Most of the Dundee Hills pioneers chased still red Pinot Noir, but in nineteen eighty-seven a Texas-born winemaker named Rollin Soles founded Argyle with a bolder idea, that Oregon's cool climate, so much like the Champagne region of France, could produce world-class sparkling wine. He made it the traditional way, the method used in Champagne, where the wine ferments a second time inside each bottle to capture the fizz.
Argyle became one of the first American wineries outside California to earn a serious reputation for sparkling wine, and its bottles have been poured at events far beyond Oregon. The winery began in a converted hazelnut drying building, and the Dundee site is now its tasting house. Argyle proved that the Dundee Hills were not a one-note region.
The same cool light and long autumns that ripen delicate Pinot Noir also make bright, crisp sparkling wine, and today a glass of Oregon bubbles is part of the story of this town.
