2018 Ponzi Vineyards Pinot Gris Old Vine Willamette Valley 750 ml

Decanter rated 167 American white wines from the 2018 vintage.

Only three bottles earned 97 points: Aubert, a coveted Sonoma Chardonnay we’re prevented from naming, and Racines.

The Ponzi Old Vine Pinot Gris scored 96, tied for fourth among all American whites that year.  It’s a STUNNING example with the kind of poise that led Wine Enthusiast to declare, “Ponzi wines are considered some of the most elegant wines in the world.” 

Planted in 1970 and grafted to Pinot Gris in 1978, Ponzi’s low-yielding old vines produce extremely concentrated, intensely flavored berries. Oregon-raised, Burgundy-trained Luisa Ponzi—who grew up with those very vines—has parlayed them into a massive coup with her 2018 Pinot Gris. 

Ponzi is the story of the dedication of Willamette Valley pioneers Dick and Nancy Ponzi, who relocated from California to Oregon in the late 1960s to make wine. With French sensibilities firmly in place thanks to research trips to Alsace and Burgundy, their small 20-acre farm flourished and grew into the legacy that is now Ponzi Vineyards—a label so renowned that in 2021 Bollinger chose them as their first winery to acquire outside France.

This is Oregon Pinot Gris at its richest and most flavorful, a benchmark from one of America’s premier Pinot-growing areas and a first family of Willamette winemaking. Wine Enthusiast put it best: “Ponzi wines are considered some of the most elegant wines in the world, and certainly have helped put Oregon on the wine map.”

Whether your scallops in tarragon beurre blanc are fit to be served at Canlis, Le Bernardin, or just on your back deck, they’ll mesh wonderfully with this wine—one of the finest Pinot Gris made in the US.