Eola-Amity Hills AVA Winery Recommendations
June 1, 2022
No visit to the Willamette Valley would be complete without a visit to the red-hot Eola-Amity Hills American Viticultural Area (AVA). Not only do we live in this AVA, but we are also making our wine at Bjornson as part of a group called the Bjornson Wine Collective. Because we call those that we make wine at Bjornson our friends, we are going to avoid bias and leave them off our recommended wines and winery list but you’d be crazy not to try them! So before I get into my recommendations, here are the wines I’ve personally tried and that feature prominently in my wine cellar! And as a side note, our winemaker, Tim Wilson’s label is Denison Cellars.
Without further ado, April and I would like to share a few recommendations for those visiting the Eola-Amity Hills AVA and in search of amazing wines. In no particular order….
Stangeland
Right down the hill from Bjornson is Stangeland Winery. Rather than comment on a specific wine, we just enjoy them all! We also find these are the most economical high-quality wines offered anywhere in the area.
Cristom
April and I have been wine club members at Cristom for years, and we still are! We haven’t really found a wine that fails to amaze. Their Pinot noirs are their bread and butter, but they also have a small Syrah block on their property that impresses everyone that gets their hands on a bottle. The winery has at least one secondary label – in the owner’s name – where they make Syrah from the Walla Walla AVA. These wines inspired us to begin investigating that area, where we eventually landed on buying a five-acre property in the Rocks District of the Milton-Freewater AVA. We call our new vineyard the Set in Stone Vineyard, which is the source of our 2025 Rocks Syrah and Grenache.
Evesham Wood
Neither April nor I can remember where we had our first bottle of Evesham Wood Pinot noir, but the discovery led us to track down the winery just outside of Salem. Similar to Stangeland and Cristom, you’ll be hard-pressed not to find amazing wines throughout their portfolio.
Bryn Mahr
We discovered Bryn Wahr fairly recently when long-time friends from Ohio were visiting for a second time. We agreed to visit a few wineries that April and I, nor they, had visited before. Bryn Mahr came highly recommended so we booked an appointment. All the Pinots they were pouring were elegant but they also poured a few surprises, varietals that I didn’t know grew in the area. I think they partially inspired us to take a few chances, which is reflective of what we planted in the Fall of 2022.
Limited Addition Wines
Not a winery that you can visit in the Eola-Amity Hills as far as I know, but I added Limited Addition Wines to the list because of one very special wine that they bottle, which is their Eola Springs Cabernet Franc. This varietal is sourced from the same vineyard as one of our Chardonnay sources in the Eola-Amity Hills AVA and farmed by the same team from Atlas Vineyard Management that farms our McMinnville vineyard. When we first tasted this Cabernet Franc, we were sold on the promise of a Willamette Valley Cabernet Franc. We just finished planting a little more than two acres at our estate vineyard, and we’re making our first Cab Franc in 2023 from Walla Walla Valley fruit just south of the Washington boarder in Milton-Freewater. Be sure to visit Limited Addition Wines’ website and look for their Cab Franc, it’s fantastic.
