David Lett, Papa Pinot, and the Eyrie Vineyards
Near Dundee, Oregon
In January of nineteen sixty-five, a twenty-five-year-old named David Lett drove north into Oregon with three thousand grape cuttings in his car and a theory almost nobody shared. Lett believed that Pinot Noir, the notoriously fussy red grape of Burgundy, could ripen in Oregon's cool, damp climate. He first nursed his cuttings near Corvallis, then searched for the right hillside.
He found it in the Dundee Hills, on a former orchard, and in nineteen sixty-six he and his wife Diana spent part of their honeymoon planting the first commercial Pinot Noir in the Willamette Valley. They named the vineyard Eyrie, after the hawks that nested above the young vines. Lett also planted Pinot Gris, becoming the first person to grow that grape commercially in the United States.
For his pioneering work, and for a silver beard and stubborn streak that reminded people of Ernest Hemingway, he earned the nickname Papa Pinot. David Lett died in two thousand eight, but the vines he planted still grow, and nearly every bottle of Oregon Pinot Noir traces its lineage back to the theory this one young man refused to abandon.
