California and Burgundy Gave Chardonnay a Reputation. Can Oregon Break Through?
No grape has experienced the simultaneous highs and lows of the wine world quite like Chardonnay. Perhaps befitting its very nature, it has existed as both the base material for many of the world’s most coveted white wines and as the basis for a veritable ocean of mediocre, soulless wine; as a darling of collectors and critics alike and the inspiration for a range of derisive and dismissive slogans and movements.
Yet even as Chardonnay has commanded eye-watering price points, conquered the globe, and become ubiquitous in the wine world, one thing it’s almost never been is… cool. Well, some producers in Oregon are aiming to change that.
Though the state made its name on another (more widely beloved) grape variety, an increasing number of producers are realizing the potential to make outstanding Chardonnay in the Willamette Valley. But is it wise for winemakers to invest in a grape with such a controversial reputation in America? And even if it breaks beyond the “Anything But Chardonnay” crowd, do the high-end Oregon bottles stand a chance selling up against their counterparts in Burgundy?
Betting on Chardonnay
For decades, the story of Oregon wine began and ended with Pinot Noir. The earliest founders of the state’s wine industry had very purposefully sought out the Willamette Valley as an ideal place to plant the variety, and it was the grape the propelled the region to a level of acclaim and recognition that every American appellation outside of California can only envy — and plenty within California, too.
While one of Burgundy’s prized varieties has hogged the attention, the other, Chardonnay, has had a more tumultuous history in Oregon. Yet over the last few years — and, if you were listening very closely, decades — the drumbeat has gotten louder. Could it be that Chardonnay, even more than Pinot Noir, achieves true world-class status in this lush pocket of the Pacific Northwest.
It’s not as if Chardonnay is anything new for the Willamette Valley. It was one of the varieties that David Lett, the founder of the modern Oregon wine industry, planted in 1966 when he first arrived from California. It’s not even that Chardonnay hasn’t achieved some measure of acclaim in the past: In fact, a similar sentiment was evinced earlier in the 21st century, when the “Dijon clone” craze swept the valley. Yet it’s now, with growers and producers placing (and pricing) Chardonnay as an equal to Pinot Noir, that the argument is being most forcefully made.
Jason Lett, winemaker at The Eyrie Vineyards and David Lett’s son, has seen the many ebbs and flows of Chardonnay from the very beginning. “Dad knew that if the climate was right for Pinot Noir, it would be right for Chardonnay,” Lett says. “So when he came up [from California], he had 3,000 cuttings, and more than half of that was Pinot Noir and Chardonnay in equal quantities. In fact, Chardonnay, throughout the 1970s, was the second most widely planted variety in Oregon behind Pinot Noir.”
“Dominique Lafon said to me ‘You know, the Willamette Valley, particularly the Eola-Amity Hills, is the best place for growing Chardonnay in the New World.”
“When Chardonnay started here, a lot of people either tried to copy the dominant financial model, which was California, or the dominant historical model, which was Burgundy,” says Josh Bergström, winemaker at Bergström Wines. “They weren’t making wines that were true to this region, they were just trying to copy a successful model. So they essentially either did OK or failed and turned to Pinot Gris or a different variety because that’s what the market wanted. But there have always been, there are now, and there always will be this small group of people who are completely passionate about [Chardonnay] because it was meant to be grown here. It was meant to be grown side by side with Pinot Noir.”
An unsuccessful blend of muddled marketing, unclear ambition, and occasional toxic discourse around the relative merits of different Chardonnay clones meant that the message that Oregon spread to the world about Chardonnay was either confusing or quite simply didn’t exist. While the small number of dedicated producers that Bergström referenced never quite gave up the ghost, the variety as grown in Oregon has had few true acolytes out in the wider wine world.
That’s starting to change, as a mix of dynamic new producers and more focused plantings have given the category a jolt. One of those is 00 Wines, founded in 2015 by Chris and Kathryn Hermann with the avowed goal of making world-class Chardonnay in Oregon. Though they also produce Pinot Noir, the pair considers 00 to be a “white wine house.” To further that goal, they spent years working closely with highly established producers in Burgundy to understand, as best they could, what defined an outstanding wine and the processes that go along with making it — including mastering the somewhat controversial black Chardonnay method.
Other producers like Big Table Farm, Johan Vineyards, Brick House, and more have managed to make not just great but deeply compelling wines, helped in part by savvy labels and a more contemporary approach to marketing. People have taken notice — five Oregon Chardonnays were listed among VinePair’s Top 50 Wines of 2025, with the “VGW” from 00 Wines ranked in the No. 9 spot.
Big Reputation
Beyond internal struggles to embrace the grape within the Willamette Valley, Oregon winemakers dedicated to making Chardonnay work had to face the grape’s reputation in the larger wine market — whether that be the challenge of beating out the highly regarded, sometimes untouchable bottles from Burgundy or overcoming the misconception that all Chardonnays are thick and oaky — the California paradigm from a previous generation. They’re also having to overcome confusion within their own ranks about the best way to promote and talk about the wines.
With these challenges, Oregon has at times struggled to figure out how to market itself — whether to lean in to similarities to Burgundy (and the perhaps-dreaded Burgundian descriptor) or try to stake a different claim. Bergström prefers the term “Willamettean,” both to honor the region and to make clear that the wines are not just imitations of another region.
Ben Casteel, co-owner and winemaker at Bethel Heights, elaborates: “The Burgundians that live here don’t say it [Burgundian]. If they’re not saying it, we shouldn’t say it. I mean, we’re maritime, they’re continental. There’s tons of limestone there, there’s none here.” Yet the differences, if anything, have inspired investments from Burgundian winemakers and wine families for decades, from the Drouhin family to Louis Jadot to Dominique Lafon and several others. Their presence hasn’t just lent prestige to the region (though it has done that); it’s given the most aspirational winemakers and wineries access to an accumulation of knowledge and experience that such a young region might otherwise struggle to tap into.
Chris Hermann also has a few advantages. He grew up with a father who collected fine wine and poured many of the great wines of the world for him even as a child. He also works as a lawyer representing a large number of Oregon wineries and has advised most of the international investors that have entered the region over the last few decades. Through these connections Hermann recalls an affirming conversation with one of the true luminaries of the industry. “Dominique Lafon said to me, ‘You know, the Willamette Valley, particularly the Eola-Amity Hills, is the best place for growing Chardonnay in the New World,” he remembers.
“There have always been, there are now, and there always will be this small group of people who are completely passionate about [Chardonnay] because it was meant to be grown here. It was meant to be grown side by side with Pinot Noir.”
Their rigorous training has combined with a devout conviction in the greatness of the region (and their wines) and a willingness to travel the globe to sell it. While many West Coast producers lack the wherewithal (or budget) to travel to locales like Singapore, Macau, and Hong Kong to tout their wares, the Hermanns consider those some of their most important markets — because of how well the wines perform in the glass. “The people sitting in São Paulo or Singapore at a three-star Michelin restaurant, they don’t even know what Oregon is or where it is,” says Hermann. “It’s not that they don’t care, but it’s just that in order to get them to pay attention to what we’re doing, you have to put something in front of them where they drink it and just go ‘wow!’”
The “wow” factor, of course, comes from what’s in the glass, but also from the bottles themselves. The 00 wines don’t even say Chardonnay on the front, and eschew the conventional paper label for a chalked-on look, while Johan Vineyards and Big Table Farm both feature natural splendor rendered in either vivid color or a striking line-drawn style. As a new generation of wine drinkers either rethinks or flat-out ignores prior trends and fads, the chance is there for Oregon to not just be a price-conscious alternative to Burgundy and California, but to go toe-to-toe with them on quality alone.
The fact that the region has a checkered history with the variety and still an inconsistent ability to market itself or these wines should not take away from their absolute quality, but it makes it all the more important that the winemakers and winery operators continue to tell the story, to take the wines to markets the world over, and, of course, persist in making wines that demand the drinker sit up and take notice, and then maybe one day, someone will call a premier cru Burgundy “Willamettean.”
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