Domaine Drouhin Oregon

In 1979, at the Gault Millau tasting in Paris, David Lett’s Eyrie Pinot Noir finished in the top ten against French wines. Robert Drouhin, head of Maison Joseph Drouhin in Beaune, organized a rematch in Burgundy the following year. The Eyrie South Block came second, edged out by Drouhin’s own 1959 Chambolle-Musigny by a fraction of a point.

That got his attention.

In 1986 his daughter Véronique came to Oregon after finishing a master’s in enology, working harvests at Eyrie, Bethel Heights, and Adelsheim. What struck her as much as the wine was the sense of community among growers here. She reported back favorably.

The following year Robert attended the first International Pinot Noir Celebration and was tipped off about land for sale in the Dundee Hills. He walked the hillside with Véronique and told her: I believe in this place. We should try, if you are willing. They bought it in July 1987 — a property then in Christmas trees and wheat.

Véronique was named winemaker, her brother Philippe head of viticulture. The first vintage came in 1988 from purchased fruit, 96 barrels of Pinot Noir. In 1989 they built a four-story gravity-flow winery into the top of the hill, and made the first estate wine that year.

Véronique has made every vintage since. She was awarded the Légion d’Honneur in 2019. The family names its top wines after her children — Laurène for her eldest daughter, Louise for the younger, Arthur for the Chardonnay.

The Dundee Hills estate now covers roughly 225 acres with 127 planted, almost all Dijon clone Pinot Noir with twelve acres of Chardonnay. In 2013 the family added Roserock in the Eola-Amity Hills, a LIVE-certified site of 229 acres with 122 planted, on volcanic soil in a cooler pocket. The 2022 Roserock Pinot Noir was ranked sixth on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 of 2024.

The house style prioritizes precision, balance, and elegant structure over power — restrained oak, twenty percent new, everything racked barrel to barrel by gravity.

Four Drouhin siblings run the business across two continents.