ain? What rain? Criss-crossing the two-lane country roads in the verdant northern Willamette Valley of Oregon at the very beginning of summer, I was awestruck by the beautiful weather. Not at all what I had expected.

The Great Precipitation of the Willamette was about all that my esteemed colleague Lettie Teague could talk about in her Food & Wine Magazine article when she visited last March. Three months later, I, too, was looking for the infamous rains that pelt this Pinot Noir-producing region every year. But from what I got – four days of sunny temperatures ranging from the high 70s to the high 80s – I made the conclusion, like so many before me, that some of the best Pinot Noirs outside of Burgundy are being made right here. The unexpected bright weather served as a sort of metaphor, however, for an area that is still bright and young and learning the craft, art, and business of making wine.

As I traipsed over the Willamette (pronounced wil LAM ett) visiting about 10 producers, the agreeable weather was always the first topic of conversation. The warmth, without much humidity, was a welcome relief after a nasty, cold, wet winter and spring, which has set back the growing season about three weeks. It gave pause, I’m sure, to those winemakers who are not used to such early warm and dry conditions. It could be a harbinger of things yet to come as they – to a person – seemed keenly aware of the real possibility of climate change.

The increasing caprice of the weather is just one more factor for these Oregonians to consider. In the last decade, Oregon producers began to realize that many of the clones they were instructed to utilize, mostly from UC Davis in California, were of the wrong material for their area.

Now, after more than four decades, the producers of Willamette Pinot Noir have garnered a track record to be reckoned with. They face the future with new clones in the ground, and newly designated sub-appellations that they feel will transcend marketing stratagems.

Yes, that’s right, with exceptions such as Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, and Chardonnay – cool climate varieties all – it’s Pinot Noir that will surely be the horse that the Willamette Valley will ride. Unless, of course, climate change becomes an unequivocal reality. (Toward that end, several of the producers I met have hedged their bets by beginning to plant Syrah.)

The Willamette – running 150 miles long and 60 miles wide – is located about an hour southwest of Portland. It is the largest American Viticultural Area (AVA) in the state with about 200 wineries and 10,000 acres planted, which produce about 60 percent of Oregon’s wines. However, unlike the Napa Valley, where vineyards can be seen just about everywhere, Willamette’s vineyards are interspersed throughout the region, hidden in plain site in the nooks and crannies of the low-lying green, tree-dotted hills.

That’s because, unlike many wine-growing regions in California, Willamette vineyards seem more well suited to their sites. This is partially a result of the fragility of Pinot itself, and also to protect the vines from the weather (annual rainfall is between 45-to-60 inches as compared to the Anderson Valley’s (Mendocino) 60-inch average and Burgundy (28 inches).

During my visit, I ventured into several of the Willamette’s recently designated half-dozen sub-appellations: Yamhill-Carlton District (named in 2004), Dundee Hills (’04), McMinnville (‘05), Ribbon Ridge (’05), Eola-Amity Hills (’06) and Chehalem Mountains (’06). It is from the hillsides of these AVAs - that range in elevation from 200 to 1,000 feet - that the new paradigm of producing world-class Pinots will emanate.

As Shirley Brooks of Elk Cove Vineyards (founded in '74, thus one the oldest of Oregon’s producers) tells me, “Some (more) Pinot Noir will be planted on the valley floor … but that’s not the best vineyard land.” At Elk Cove, which is in the Yamhill-Carlton sub-region, she says, “We’ve planted seeds of the future for hillside (vineyards).”

Also in Yamhill-Carlton, but within a half-mile of the Dundee Hills AVA, transplanted Californian Thomas Houseman has recently arrived at Anne Amie Vineyards. Already he’s as bullish as all get out about Willamette and it shows in his ebullience as his long blond hair flips all over the joint.

“I was looking for a way to express myself,” he says as he explains why he left the state south of the border to come here. He is insistent in not using clones for his Pinot that are often used in California, which he likens to the “mockumentary” Spinal Tap, and which cause those wines to “crank it up to 11”.

Oregon Pinots he says are not jammy. He characterizes some of them as “sappy”. “And we need to get away from sappy and become more lifted and elegant,” Houseman declares.

On balance, a preponderance of the 40 or so Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs I tasted during my visit were neither jammy nor sappy. Most were elegant, with wonderful bright fruit, and in balance, with decided levels of acidity and relatively reasonable alcohol averaging around 14 percent.

With few exceptions, they were not California-like, although you could make a comparison to the Anderson Valley and to the Carneros. They were nearly all not Burgundian. Rather, they were Oregon, Willamette Valley Pinot Noirs.

The 2005 Anam Cara Nicolas Vineyard (about $40), comes from a very small producer , like many of the Willamette’s producers. It has incredible fruit and spot-on balance with a substantial body for long-term ageing. From the Chehalem Mountains, which are the nearest vineyards to Portland, the stated alcohol is 13.7 percent.

Over at WillaKenzie Estates, vineyard manager Daniel Fey is stumped when I ask what a typical year is like in the Yamhill-Carlton region in which his vineyards reside. He answers simply: “I haven’t had any.”

Nonetheless, the ’05 Pierre Léon from WillaKenzie ($36) is deep-flavored and complex, with some baking spices from the oak and a full mouth-feel. It’ll age for 10 years.

David Adelsheim’s Pinot Noirs are what Thomas Houseman from Anne Amie is seeking: elegance. The Adelsheim Willamette Valley from ’06 ($31) is gorgeously balanced and his ’06 Goldschmidt Vineyard from the Dundee Hills ($58) is light purple in color but is big and stylish in the mouth, and very young.

Tualatin Estate’s winemaker Don Crank explains that the parent company, Willamette Valley Vineyards, is thinking of dropping the Tualatin brand – one of the oldest in the valley (’73) – but retaining the vineyard (in the extreme northwest corner of the Willamette). The ’06, (under the WVV label using Tualatin fruit), is a beautiful, spicy Pinot. It has excellent balance and it’s smooth right now but will age for a while.

I have to include in this list the ’05 Valóis Reserve ($40) from Yamhill-Carlton’s Bishop Creek. The wine is one of the more long-lived offerings I tasted, perhaps for up to 15 years. It’s dark in color and big in the mouth with excellent acidity and substantial tannins.

Tiny Patton Valley Vineyard (3,400 cases), almost due east of Portland, has two ’06 Pinots that I think are remarkable, although higher in alcohol than most of the others I sampled. Its Willamette Valley ($35) is voluptuous, and soft, with good body and excellent fruit. It’s young for having aged about a dozen years. The Lorna Marie, also from the Willamette, will be going screw-cap with the next vintage. At $70, that’s quite ballsy. But once you taste the beautiful black cherry with some minerality (that apparently will morph into earthy, forest-floor aromas as in the ’02 I tried), you’re hooked. In the mouth it’s lovely with soft fruit and tannins. Very seductive.

Also in the higher alcohol mode are three Pinots from the modern (tasting room only) Winderlea in the Dundee Hills, which has hired Robert Brittan to make its wines. Brittan, the longtime winemaker at the Napa Valley’s Stags’ Leap Winery, has moved to Oregon. So has Tony Soter, who came home after stints at Napa’s Spottswoode and Araujo, before founding Etude in the Carneros where he has made great Pinot.

Brittan and Soter, along with California predecessor Gary Andrus (founder of Archery Summit), Frenchman Robert Drouhin (Domaine Drouhin), and über-critic Robert Parker (Beaux Frères), are among the representatives of Oregon’s new-think. That is, seeking wines that will appeal more to the international style (read big) wines.

But there are enough of the old-guard still around such as David Adelsheim, David Lett (Eyrie), Dick Erath (Erath Vineyards) Ronald and Marjorie Vuylsteke (Oak Knoll), Richard and Nancy Ponzi (Ponzi Vineyards) , Joe and Pat Campbell (Elk Cove), Susan and Bill Sokol Blosser (Sokol Blosser Winery) and Myron Redford (Amity Vineyards) to keep them honest.

Rain, rain go away. But do come again another day. You’re an important part of the process that makes unique Willamette Valley Pinot Noir.

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Photos by Alan Goldfarb