10 innovative wineries prove this U.S. wine region is the next Champagne

Oregon’s Willamette Valley features green, rolling hills covered with moss-draped trees, and a patchwork of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay vineyards. The region is home to 11 designated U.S. grape-growing regions, known as American Viticultural Areas (AVAs). Stretching from Portland to Eugene, the valley is sometimes compared to Burgundy, France. 

Lately, parallels are drawn with another famous French wine region, Champagne. Bordered by the Pacific Coastal Range to the west, the Willamette Valley’s cool nights and warm summer days create the right conditions for wine with bright acidity, a key component of top-notch sparkling wines. All Champagne’s noble varieties are represented and thriving in the valley, including Pinot Meunier and Pinot Blanc, in addition to Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.

Oregon's Willamette Valley Sparkling Wine Region

Sparkling wine production in Oregon has increased by 25 to 30 percent in the last four years, and more than 100 wineries produce sparkling wine in the state, according to Method Oregon. The non-profit organization founded by Oregon sparkling winemakers will host the second Method Oregon Grand Tasting Weekend in the Willamette Valley in July—an annual celebration of Oregon’s traditional method sparkling wine. 

The traditional method, or méthode champenois, is the painstaking process used in Champagne that includes a natural secondary fermentation in a bottle rather than a tank or through forced carbonation. To carry the Method Oregon mark, wines must be 100 percent produced in Oregon, use the traditional method, and be aged a minimum of 24 months en tirage, the crucial stage where wines are aged on yeast, which eventually adds flavor and texture.

Andrew Davis, the director of winemaking at Lytle-Barnett, a Willamette Valley winery that exclusively produces sparkling wines, says practically every wine region in the world produces a little sparkling wine. However, no one has truly tried to become the new world equivalent of Champagne. “I sincerely believe that we can be that place, and we're just now getting that story started,” says Davis.

Method Oregon has also launched a trail map to help visitors easily find tasting rooms featuring Method Oregon sparkling wines across the Willamette Valley and the state.  

Here are 10 Willamette Valley wineries producing exceptional bottles, as well as where you should stay and eat.

(Here's why stargazers are flocking to the Oregon Outback.)

1. Corollary Wines, Amity, Oregon

Corollary Wines’ angular, hilltop tasting room, with a red powder-coated exterior, makes a striking statement atop a hill in Eola-Amity Hills. Guests can make an appointment for seated tastings of new spring releases, such as the mineral 2021 X-Omni Blanc de Blancs. Corollary specializes in single-vineyard traditional-method sparkling wines and often sources fruit from vineyards that don’t ripen enough for still wine.

Corollary co-owners and winemakers Jeanne Feldkamp and Dan Diephouse also make a carbonic-fermented sparkling rosé in which the grapes are submerged in CO2, which kicks off fermentation and produces fruity, food-friendly flavors. “People really love them [sparkling wines], but they don't understand them a lot yet; a lot of what we do in the tasting room is education,” says Diephouse.

2. Arabilis, Amity, Oregon

So, what makes a sparkling wine stand out? At the independent wine brand Arabilis, which released three new sparkling wines in April 2026 (spring is the unofficial “new bubbles” season in the Willamette Valley), owners Kenny and Allison McMahon say carbonation can amplify faults, so they are extremely careful during primary fermentation. 

“We are making wine first. It must be clean and the best,” says Kenny McMahon, who has a doctorate in sparkling wine. Arabilis’ 2021 Johan Vineyard Blanc de Noirs is an elegant sparkling with citrus aromas and fine bead-like bubbles. 

The couple regularly travels to Champagne to study directly with leading sparkling wine producers. In the winemaking facility in downtown Amity, a historic farming town known for spring daffodils and hazelnut trees, visitors can make an appointment for a private tasting and tour with Kenny, who keeps tastings fun and approachable by using reference points like Sour Patch Kids to describe a wine’s complexity. 

3. Soter Vineyards, Carlton, Oregon 

In 1997, Tony Soter took a risk and launched his wine brand, not with a still Pinot Noir, but with two sparkling wines: a brut rosé and a blanc de blancs. Using only estate-grown fruit and making the wine fully in-house, Soter Vineyards was one of Oregon’s first true grower‑producers. 

In a story-book workshop, the winemaker and cellar master draw from dozens of reserve wines (dating back to 2011) and spend hours blending and hand-riddling, the process of periodically rotating a bottle and tilting it so sediment slides down to the neck, up to 7,000 bottles a day. Every bottle is disgorged, a process where the yeast sediment is removed after secondary fermentation and finished in-house. Tastings at Soter’s biodynamic farm, vineyard, and tasting room are true culinary experiences and can include local cheese pairings or a chef-curated lunch featuring farm-grown ingredients.

4. Lytle-Barnett, Dundee, Oregon

While the lounge-like tasting room is in Dundee, Lytle-Barnett grows and sources grapes almost exclusively from the Eola-Amity Hills. The AVA experiences direct maritime influence from winds blowing from the coast through the Van Duzer Corridor.

Winemaking director Andrew Davis founded The Radiant Sparkling Wine Company in 2014. The mobile service is widely credited with enabling small producers to make sparkling wines in the Willamette Valley. At Lytle Barnett, he focuses solely on vintage-dated wines aged a minimum of three years before release (and often much longer), such as the 2014 Brut Extended Tirage, which exhibits yeasty brioche character and complexity. “There's the magic of time and aging and slow evolution of this wine towards something pretty magical,” says Davis.

For an adventurous wine country experience, Equestrian Wine Tours offers two-and-a-half-hour rides on Tennessee walking horses through Dundee’s russet hillsides. Tours usually stop at Winter’s Hill and Durant vineyards, also home to the Durant Olive Mill. Many of the horses are rescues, and custom saddlebags make purchasing and transporting bottles a breeze. 

5. Granville Wine Co., Dundee, Oregon

It’s easy to tick off many tastings in Dundee, with its abundant restaurants and tasting rooms. Family-owned Granville Wine Co. hosts tastings by appointment at its tasting house on Jory Lane. To obtain the proper aromatics out of sparkling wine, ditch the Champagne flute in favor of a white wine glass, says winery co-founder Jackson Holstein. The second-generation Oregon winemaker grew up watching his viticulturist father help establish Argyle Winery. “Sparkling wine is meant to be consumed similarly to your Bourgogne blancs,” says Holstein. 

He believes Willamette Valley sparkling wines can achieve consistency without dosage, because of its climate. Dosage is the final step in Champagne production, where a small amount of sugar and reserve wine is added to a bottle just before corking to balance the wine’s acidity. Holstein's 2021 Blanc de Noirs and 2021 Blanc de Blancs, to be released this summer, are pure and natural, with no dosage.

Break up wine tasting stops in Dundee with visits to the Red Hills Market for farm-to-table fare and Briar Rose Creamery, which makes small batch cheeses by hand.

6. Argyle, Dundee, Oregon

The history of sparkling wine-making in Oregon dates back to the 1980s, when Argyle founder Rollin Soles took a chance and began making traditional method sparkling wine in 1987. Under the leadership of winemaker Kate Payne Brown, offerings include extended tirage bruts (the word brut is used to classify very dry Champagne and sparkling wine), vintage blanc de blancs and blanc de noirs, as well as brut rosés. Blanc de blancs is a sparkling wine produced from white grapes. Blanc de noirs, French for white from black, is a wine made from red grapes like Pinot Noir or Pinot Meunier.

In the heart of Dundee, a town in the Willamette Valley’s north end, Argyle’s barn-like Tasting House is easy to spot on OR-99W.  In the space made of reclaimed materials, visitors can see the winery’s four original fermentation tanks, stroll through gardens, and make reservations for a variety of tasting experiences from a deep dive into sparkling wines to a Library Experience that includes trying rare, aged wines alongside current releases. Walk-ins are accepted at the Tasting House, subject to availability. 

7. Goodfellow Family Cellars, McMinnville, Oregon

 Relatively new to sparkling wine, Goodfellow Family Cellars has been producing still wines for over two decades, but its first traditional method sparkling wines were disgorged in April of 2024. The winery works with some of the oldest sustainably farmed vineyards in the valley.

Goodfellow welcomes guests in its McMinnville cellar on select days by appointment. There’s much to do in McMinnville before and after a tasting, from exploring the shops and restaurants on historic Third Street to visiting the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum. The Smithsonian-affiliated museum has dozens of civilian and military aircraft on display, including Howard Hughes’ designed Spruce Goose.

8. Cho Wines, Hillsboro, Oregon

News of the first Korean American-owned winery in Oregon quickly spread after Lois and Dave Cho’s wines were featured on Wine Enthusiast’s Top 100 Wine List in 2022 and 2024, including a brut rosé and blanc de noirs. On a high peak in the Chehalem Mountains, Cho Wines’ light-filled tasting room with a large terrace overlooks the Wapato Lake Wildlife Refuge, where hikers are likely to spot black-tailed deer, bald eagles, red-tailed hawks, and migrating tundra swans. 

Tastings include a sparkling wine flight featuring traditional-method sparkling wines and  undisgorged brut-style wines. Cho Wines produces everything from an award-winning blanc de noirs featuring fruit from the Laurelwood Vineyard with tart berry and orange notes to a fun and funky unfiltered Pinot Gris pet-nat.

Wine de Roads cycling tours, offered from late April through October, might include a full-day jaunt through the Chehalem Valley with three winery visits and a picnic lunch. The terrain is mainly flat roads with some rolling hills. On frequent stops, guides impart wisdom about the region’s history and, of course, the wines.  

9. Perlée, Dundee, Oregon

Perlée, a collaboration between some well-known names in the valley, is opening in June 2026 in the Dundee Hills. The first release, a 2022 Blanc de Blancs, contains fruit from the estate Foothills Vineyard, which is surrounded by oak trees, rare in the Willamette Valley. Yeast from the oak trees was banked and propagated for the wine’s fermentation. “Yeast plays a special role in expressing the terroir of a vineyard,” says co-founder Tiffany Austin.

In a tasting room with charred shou sugi ban walls, Italian-made light fixtures, and stone accents, visitors can reserve intimate seating tasting experiences featuring bites from a Michelin-starred chef paired with Perlée wines, other organically farmed sparkling wines in the valley, and even international producers.

Southeast of Dundee, Champoeg State Heritage Area is on the National Register of Historic Places. Pioneers voted to form Oregon's first provisional government on the site, which today is a green oasis for recreation and wildlife with abundant birds and paved walking and biking trails along the Willamette River.

10. Gran Moraine, Yamhill, Oregon 

At Gran Moraine, where Chardonnay is the star of the show, winemaker Shane Moore crafts high-quality sparkling wines in an open-air winery. By combining cool-climate Yamhill-Carlton terroir with an early-picking strategy, Moore’s traditional-method sparkling wines emphasize acidity, tension, minerality, and umami character. The Non-Vintage Yamhill Carlton Brut Rosé is a blend of Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Pinot Meunier, with aromas of strawberry shortcake and bright nectarine notes.

Gran Moraine has a variety of wine-tasting experiences, from flights paired with black-truffle popcorn and caviar to sparkling-wine-focused brunches.