Lange Estate: A quiet legacy in the Willamette Valley & vertical tasting

Don and Wendy Lange found a 30-acre (12 ha) parcel on the eastern knoll of the Dundee Hills, which did not become an appellation until 2005. They set down roots, planting their first vines in 1988, and establishing Lange Estate.

The Langes’ journey to become one of the early pieces of the Willamette Valley wine puzzle was a circuitous one.

Scroll down for notes and scores of a deep Lange Estate vertical

Don Lange, originally from Iowa, is an accomplished musician. In his heyday, he collaborated with artists like John Prine, Steve Goodman, and Pete Seeger in Chicago’s vibrant folk music scene of the 1960s and 1970s.

Don was a singer-songwriter before the category had a name, recording three of his own albums and penning songs for a group of successful folk singers.

Relocating to California, Don met Wendy and the two became committed to the notion of making wine. First, they were fixed on Zinfandel before turning their attention to Pinot Noir.

They credit a bottle of Morey St Denis with showing them what wine could really be, and after that, the pair became fixated on where you could make such a wine in the New World.

Don worked at Sanford & Benedict, a Pinot Noir producer that founded the wine industry in Santa Barbara County, when a chance encounter with Oregon Pinot Noir changed everything.

Wendy had raised the idea of Oregon, but they weren’t totally convinced.

A pair of dusty bottles

‘I was grocery shopping,’ says Don about how he discovered the potential for Pinot Noir in Oregon. It was 1987, and Don Lange found two bottles of Oregon Pinot Noir on the bottom shelf of a local grocery store ‘on the mesa in Santa Barbara,’ he says.

The bottles were dusty, ‘they were at least six years old,’ recalls Don.

The two wines presented a lightbulb moment: a 1979 Erath Pinot Noir from the Maresh Vineyard and a 1980 Eyrie Vineyards, both coming from the region’s founding appellation, the Dundee Hills.

There was a phone number on the back of the Erath bottle, and Wendy encouraged Don to reach out. ‘She said, well, just call him up, so I got up from the dinner table and called the number’ he recalls he’d end up speaking to one of the very early pioneers of the Willamette, Dick Erath.

‘Eventually, someone handed him the phone, and Dick was like you should come up. Three weeks later, we were up here.’

Upon arrival, they drove the length of the valley, starting in the far south, before they realised that the region’s wine epicentre was well to the north. The Lange estate vineyard is just a few hills over from the old vine sites responsible for those two bottles.

‘In hindsight, I guess those bottles were pointing the way all along,’ Don says.

The early days of Lange Estate

The Langes discovered the Pinots of Oregon and visited in the spring of 1987; by June, they had moved to the Dundee Hills. ‘We made wine as soon as we got here, from purchased grapes. We just wanted to get a toe hold and get started as soon as we could,’ Don remembers.

They made wine in the basement of the house that first year.

The property they acquired came with six plantable acres (2.5 hectares) below the house, all of it with southeast-facing slopes, which made Don think of the Côte d’Or.

The estate is a combination of Dijon clones and cuttings that Don brought from the Sta Rita site, Bien Nacido.

‘It was really mostly Douglas fir and hazelnut orchards when we got here,’ says Wendy Lange. The Lange family arrived to a nascent industry that was still fighting to be understood.

While they made wine, they managed to cobble together a living. Wendy worked at the Erath tasting room, and Don, who held an MFA degree, taught music at some local community colleges and performed with his guitar in the evenings.

‘There were several challenges, people had no idea how to pronounce Oregon, let alone the fact that we were making fine wines here,’ Don recalls. The Langes credit the hard work and support of the early pioneers for their success.

It was an industry that was built on an ethic of collaboration and cooperation. The early pioneers welcomed the growing winemaking community, sharing their knowledge of the region and learning from each other’s collective successes and failures.

Later down the line, in 1987, the Drouhin family from Burgundy bought some land. The New York Times wrote a story about the Pinot Noir from Ponzi Vineyards in the late 1990s.

People were beginning to take notice, and take Oregon Pinot Noir seriously.

Lange Estate at a glance:

Founded: 1987, first vines planted in 1988

Estate Vineyards: Legacy (original vines), Mia Block, Redside and Lucky River

Winemakers: Jesse Lange, Executive winemaker, Don Lange

Noteworthy wines: Classique Pinot Noir, Freedom Hill Pinot Noir, Lucky River Pinot Noir, Reserve Pinot Gris

A commitment to Pinot Gris

‘We drank some Grigios in Santa Barbara,’ Don recollects, ‘but they were pretty simple wines.’

His impression of the variety changed dramatically upon the Langes’ arrival in Oregon.

‘Eyrie, Ponzi, Adelsheim were making Pinot Gris and those wines really got my attention. Wow, this is different,’ he says.

With freshly planted vines but no fruit, the Langes purchased grapes from their neighbours.

‘There was a vineyard, just over those trees,’ Don says, motioning to the east. ‘They asked if we were interested in buying any Pinot Gris, and I said, of course.’

‘He put that in puncheons, and so we were the first to make barrel fermented Pinot Gris in the country,’ adds Jesse.

Even as much of the Willamette has shifted to focus on Chardonnay, Lange, along with Eyrie and Ponzi in particular, remain at the forefront of a serious, ageworthy style of Oregon Pinot Gris.

The second generation

As the second generation, Jesse Lange joined the family business in 2004. As affable a winemaker as you’ll meet, Jesse is fully engaged in both the family estate and the success of the Dundee Hills appellation.

‘We’re a 40-year, overnight success,’ says Jesse about the well-earned reputation of the wines of the Dundee Hills.

At the same time, Don and Wendy still play a significant role as the ‘consulting winemakers’, with 40 years of experience at the estate.

Jesse has brought a considerable technical wine background back to the family estate after stints in Santa Barbara and New Zealand.

The holdings have grown from the original 30 acres to 60 planted acres (36ha) in the Dundee Hills. The Langes recently acquired the Lucky River vineyard, an additional 65-acre site.

The Pinot Noirs are considerable examples of Classic Willamette Valley, aligned with Don’s mantra of, ‘balance, structure and texture. Wines that you take to the table,’ to hear Don say it.

They are evocative of place and a winemaking acumen that has been learned and transmitted over the years in the Dundee Hills.

The Pinot Gris remains among the best examples in the Willamette Valley.

Lange Estate vertical

Wines are listed in vintage order from oldest to youngest

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