The Tualatin Hills AVA is the northernmost appellation of the Willamette Valley, a 15-mile slice of upland country in the Tualatin River watershed, just west of Portland and east of the Coast Range. Established in 2020, it is a young appellation built on a very old winegrowing tradition: this corner of Washington County is home to some of the oldest vineyards in Oregon, and the area was farmed for grapes, orchards, and grass seed long before the modern Pinot Noir era began.
The AVA's defining feature is its soil. The Tualatin Hills hold the largest concentration of Laurelwood soils in Oregon, a windblown volcanic loess deposited over an ancient basalt base during the Missoula Floods thousands of years ago. Fine, silty, and largely free of rock, these soils sit alongside a climate that runs slightly warmer than the neighboring Laurelwood District, sheltered as it is by the Coast Range to the west and the Chehalem Mountains to the south. The wines lean toward bright, red-fruited, aromatic Pinot Noir, with Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, and Riesling rounding out the mix.
History runs deep here. David Hill traces its roots to a farmhouse dating to the 1880s and vines replanted in 1965, while Montinore Estate has become one of the largest producers of certified biodynamic estate wines in the country. Along with Tualatin Estate and Helvetia, these producers give the district a quiet, rural, deeply agricultural feel. Less than an hour from Portland yet worlds away in pace, the Tualatin Hills reward visitors looking for pioneering history and uncrowded tasting rooms.
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