8 Outstanding Willamette Valley Wines at $50 or Less

Oregon’s Willamette Valley encompasses more than 5,000 square miles between the Oregon Coast and Cascade mountain ranges. For millions of years, tectonic plate collisions pushed these mountains out of the Pacific Ocean, forming the crescent-shaped valley and giving it a diverse array of volcanic and sedimentary soils. This week’s Tasting Highlights explores the intricacies of a few Willamette Valley subregions with eight outstanding-rated wines that earned 90 points or more on our 100-point scale.

Véronique Boss-Drouhin is a fourth-generation winegrower from the family behind Joseph Drouhin in France’s Burgundy, and she came to Willamette Valley in 1987. When establishing her new winery, Domaine Drouhin, she was led to the Dundee Hills subregion in the heart of Willamette Valley, owing to its climatic and topographical similarities to her home region. Here, grapes grow on undulating slopes with deep, iron-rich volcanic soils called Jory, well-suited for Oregon's signature Pinot Noir and Chardonnay grape varieties. Boss-Drouhin's Hills Arthur bottling, below, is a refined and focused Chardonnay with apple, pear and honey blossom accents.

This lineup includes Arterberry Maresh's Pinot Noir Dundee Hills 2022, a sleek red with expressive red fruit and spice notes. Read on to get our score and expert tasting note for this outstanding Oregon wine and seven others.

Tasting Highlights' wine reviews are fresh out of the tasting room, offering a sneak peek of our editors' most recent ratings—including scores and full tasting notes—to WineSpectator.com members.

Try Winespectator.com Free for 30 Days!

Full access to our database of more than 425,000 wine ratings

Early access to reviews on our editors' favorite just-rated wines

Wine and food pairing tool,
chefs' pairing recommendations

Best value wines and winery intel

Subscribe today