Lange Estate Winery & Vineyards

I’ve heard it said that the dry fly on many of the Lange Estate wine bottle labels is a Blue Saturn fly. It wasn’t chosen simply because it’s a nice image. Rather, it reflects an appreciation for the great outdoors that shapes the lifestyle of owners Don and Wendy Lange, as well as their approach to winemaking, I suspect. Although I am not a fly-fisherman, I do appreciate the beauty of an accomplished angler’s smooth cast and ability to hit the right spot — just like the wines of Lange Estate Vineyard & Winery.

Don and Wendy came north to Oregon from Santa Barbara in the mid-1980s. They cast their lot and hit a perfect spot: the red hills of Dundee. It didn’t take long to get a bite, and soon they were producing handcrafted pinot gris, chardonnay, and pinot noir. That was in 1987. Since then, their production has steadily increased to an annual production of 16,000 cases, most of which comes from their own 45-acre estate vineyard. With the winemaking assistance of their son, Jesse, they create a number of pinot noirs bearing the names of their sources — Lange Estate Vineyard, Freedom Hill Vineyard, Yamhill Vineyards, and Three Hills Cuvée — and they continue to work the vintages year after year. Each year, however, presents new challenges brought by heat and rain, and requires constant vigilance and inventiveness (and, like fly-fishing, a little luck).

For the white wine lovers among us, Lange continues to produce two styles of pinot gris with distinctive flavor profiles. Don was the first to produce barrel-fermented pinot gris and offers this alongside their stainless steel variation. Their chardonnay releases also rely on a combination of barrel-fermented and stainless-steel-produced vintages. After sampling my way through many, many chardonnays, I’ve come to a point where I don’t feel that one chardonnay is any better than another. Which chardonnay I choose to take home depends on what I am eating. For me, barrel-fermented goes nicely with a richer white fish or a seafood linguine, whereas I like the stainless-steel-produced chardonnay with ahi or Thai cuisine.

When you visit Lange Estate, be sure you take in the views of the Chehalem Valley below and the Cascade Mountains in the distance. This vista certainly ranks among the top 10 views for Oregon wineries, and the winery is the perfect spot to reel in one of life’s great pleasures.