Hillside Heritage

By Brian Doyle

 The first time I ever met Jesse Lange, he sold me a bottle of someone else’s wine. This was before I knew he made his own wines, with his dad, at Lange Winery in Dundee, about 25 miles southwest of Portland. Unbelievably lovely, balanced, muscular, complex wines they are, too. And while Jesse and his dad, Don, make some crisp savory white wines, it’s their pinot noir, the workhorse of the winery, that has developed a national and now international reputation as some of the best of its kind in the world.

My wife, who likes expeditions, led me up to Lange Winery one day, high in the Dundee hills overlooking the northern Willamette Valley — there’s no more beautiful spot in Oregon on a sunny day — and there, to my surprise, was the personable young guy who had, when briefly a waiter, seemed startlingly knowledgeable about wines.

It turned out that Jesse was the general manager and co-winemaker of a corporation making some 12,000 cases of a product that increasingly defines the northern Willamette Valley .

Over the course of the next two years, as I wrote a book called The Grail about what actually goes on in the fields of Lange vineyards and in the winery, I came to have a tremendous respect for this 2000 business graduate of Oregon State, who is a remarkably articulate leader of what is Oregon’s increasingly world-renowned industry.

Wendy, Jesse and Don Lange (from left) sample pinot noir in the barrel room of the winery.

	Brand new starter vines
	Jesse Lange surveys the family’s vineyards.
	Jesse Lange uses a wine thief to draw wine from a barrel for tasting.
Jesse Lange works in the barrel room.
	Don, Wendy and Jesse (from left) compare vintages.
	Cover : Jesse Lange savors the bouquet of a yet-to-be-released pinot noir.