Our Vineyards

Winemaker Tim Wilson works with exceptional vineyard sites across the Willamette Valley to craft his wines.
The classic Denison Cellars wine style showcases the unique characteristics of each site, expressing purity of fruit.
Read about the defining attributes of each vineyard site below.

Our Vineyard Program

Classically Willamette Valley

The Denison Cellars Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, our flagship wine, showcases the depth and breadth of vineyards we are fortunate enough to work with. We treat this wine as the true Denison Cellars “house style”, a patchwork expressing different AVAs within the Willamette Valley.

Johnson Ridge Vineyard
Eola-Amity Hills AVA

Johnson Ridge Vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills AVA of the Willamette Valley is one of the most important sources of Pinot noir grapes for the Denison Cellars wine program. The Willamette Valley was formed millions of years ago, as an ocean floor trapped between two emerging mountain ranges – the Cascade and Oregon Coast ranges – which aided the flow of lava erupting from volcanoes in the Blue Mountains of northeastern Oregon to the east of the Cascades towards the sea. The lava flows covered the layers of marine sediment on the floor of the emerging Willamette Valley with layers of basalt, and much of what remained in Johnson Ridge Vineyards was fairly shallow Nekia soil, the windblown, sedimentary soil for which the Eola Amity Hills AVA is famous.

  • With only two acres of the vineyard planted to Pinot noir on tightly-spaced (3.3 ft. by 5.5 ft.) vines, Johnson Ridge Vineyard ranges between 450-600 feet of elevation, south-facing on a relatively steep slope of 8%. Planted to Pommard and 777 Pinot noir clones, the vineyard is largely protected from the cooling marine winds that funnel down the Van Duzer Corridor, the cooling winds for which the Eola-Amity Hills are well-known. This lesser influence of wind in this location, on Walnut Hill in the north end of the Eola-Amity Hills AVA, means the grape skins don’t need to thicken as much as they would on top of the hill, where the Van Duzer winds have a greater influence; as a result, tannins are finer and the resulting texture in the wines is more refined. Owner and winemaker Tim Wilson is the exclusive buyer of the Pinot noir fruit from Johnson Ridge Vineyard, and he works closely with the vineyard manager about growing and picking decisions.

Björnson Vineyard
Eola-Amity Hills AVA

“We have known Mark and Pattie Bjornson since early on in our existence. We hit it off right away (Pattie Tim are shamelessly proud Minnesotans), and as we grew the winemaking program at Denison Cellars it seemed only logical that we try to include Björnson Vineyard fruit in our portfolio. Not only because of where we came from, but also because of the exceptional quality of their vineyards”.

Björnson Vineyard is located on the east side of the Eola-Amity Hills AVA, with a latitude right on the 45th Parallel.

  • The Björnsons planted their first vineyard blocks in 2006 with subsequent plantings in 2009 and 2012. The vineyard is on a southwest slope and ranges between 440 and 540 feet of elevation. Soils are primarily volcanic, with both Jory and Nekia series soils present.

    I use Pommard and 777 clones from Kaitlyn’s Block for production of our Denison Cellars Björnson Vineyard pinot noir. The 2019 Denison Cellars Björnson Vineyard Pinot Noir is our inaugural vintage of this single vineyard wine. It has vibrant acidity and focused red fruit that will age gracefully and only improve over the next 5-10 years.

    We made wine at Bjornson Vineyards from the summer of 2020 until the summer of 2023, when we moved back to a more nearby urban setting in McMinnville.