One of the Best Things We Did All Year
If you’ve never heard of it, picture this: 50+ of Oregon’s best wineries combined with hundreds of seriously passionate wine people and a backdrop of beautiful rolling hills covered in Pinot Noir vines. Add a schedule jam-packed with tastings and learning so that you fall into bed every night totally wiped out, smiling and happy in the best way. It was hot, it was a lot of work, but honestly, we loved every second of it.
We had the honor of volunteering at Oregon Pinot Camp 2026, held June 22–25 in the heart of the Willamette. What started as a way to give back to an industry we are passionate about, turned into an enriching, fun, and enjoyable experience.
Why We Volunteered
Oregon Pinot Camp isn’t just a tasting event, it’s a mission. Since its founding in 2000, OPC has been built around the idea of showcasing the amazing Oregon wines, the welcoming people and the beautiful Willamette Valley. The best way to create lifelong advocates for Oregon wine is to bring the wine trade there, let them walk the vineyards, shake the winemakers’ hands, feel the soil, smell the earth, and taste the wines in the place where they were born. As volunteers, we got to be part of making that magic happen.
Being on the volunteer side of things also means you see OPC from every angle. You’re there for the logistics and the laughter, the chaos of all the arrangements, the early mornings loading buses and the late nights when the wine people inevitably find each other at a bar and refuse to go to sleep. It was chaos, it was work, it was dedication and it was wonderful. Helping to set up for the breakfast, lunches, dinners and tasting felt like a privilege.
The Education: A Master Class in Pinot Noir
What OPC does better than almost any other wine event in the world is education in a fun way. Campers are divided into small bus groups and rotate through six different seminars over the first two days, covering everything from Willamette Valley soil types and Pinot Noir clonal selection to winemaking philosophy and vintage variation. Watching winemakers geek out in their own vineyards, crouching down to grab a handful of Jory volcanic soil or Willakenzie marine sediment to pass around, is something you simply can’t replicate in a classroom.
We came away with a much deeper appreciation for just how nuanced Pinot Noir truly is, how a single decision in the vineyard, like how high you position the grape clusters or which rootstock you choose, ripples all the way through to what ends up in your glass. Pinot Noir is famously difficult to grow, and spending time in these vineyards with the people who dedicate their lives to it only deepened our respect.
The Hunt for the Great White
As much as we love Pinot Noir, some of the most exciting moments of the week came from Oregon’s whites.
OPC has long included sessions celebrating the world of Chardonnay, Pinot Gris, and Riesling that often gets overshadowed by the state’s famous red. The “Hunt for the Great White” was a highlight that we really enjoyed too! Winemakers poured their most compelling whites, some blind, and the conversation that followed was the kind you only get when brilliant wine people are tasting the same wines at the same time and actually talking to each other.
Oregon Chardonnay, in particular, has been making quiet waves for years with bright acidity, elegant fruit, and restrained oak. This year’s lineup drove that point home. The Pinot Gris panel was equally relevant, with winemakers making the case that Oregon’s maritime-influenced, cool-climate Gris is one of the most underappreciated white wines in America.
Celebrating the Wineries We Love
Of course, OPC is more than seminars and symposiums. It’s people. And one of the greatest gifts of being there is spending uninterrupted time with the wineries that inspire us, some of our own Bottle360 Clients, like Bjornson Wine and Bethel Heights Winery.
Björnson Vineyard, nestled in the Eola-Amity Hills on a stunning 107-acre estate, is one of those places that makes you feel as if you’ve been transported to a Swiss countryside mansion.. Mark and Pattie Björnson built their environmentally friendly estate and planted their vineyard block by block, with care and intention that shows up in every bottle. Björnson produces Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of extraordinary depth, but they also push boundaries with varieties like Gouais Blanc and Aligoté, which feels perfectly on-brand for a winery that approaches everything with curiosity and warmth. Seeing fellow campers discover Björnson for the first time this week was a genuine joy.
And then there is Bethel Heights Winery, a pillar of the Oregon wine world and, fittingly, a place that helped shape Björnson’s own story (Pattie Björnson interned there before launching her own label). Bethel Heights has been farming sustainably in the Eola-Amity Hills for decades, and their wines carry that sense of quiet confidence that only comes from deep roots and an unwavering commitment to the land. At OPC, their wine by Ben Casteel poured beautifully against the backdrop of winemaker conversations and vineyard sunsets, exactly the setting they deserve.
Getting to toast to these wineries, among so many others we admire, like Brywn Mar, Illahee, Lingua Franca, St. Innocent, Domaine Drouhin, and Hundred Suns, while surrounded by the larger Oregon wine community, was a reminder of why this industry is so worth being a part of.
Oregon Wine Country Is the Real Deal
If you’ve never spent time in the Willamette Valley, please go. Oregon wine country is lush, unpretentious, and extraordinarily welcoming. The mornings are cool, the afternoons warm, and the light at golden hour across a Pinot Noir block is incredibly beautiful. Oregon’s winemakers are, as a group, some of the most generous and intellectually curious people we know. They passionately discuss clones, trade dirt samples, and debate oak regimes with the same enthusiasm that other people bring to sports. That energy is contagious, and spending four days immersed in it leaves you genuinely more in love with wine than when you arrived. We highly recommend this event.
Until Next Year
Oregon Pinot Camp was indeed a multi-day wine party you didn’t know you needed in the beautiful Willamette Valley.. As volunteers, we came to serve and left feeling more inspired, more educated, and more grateful for the Oregon wine community and the clients and friends who are part of it.
Thank you to Björnson Wine, Bethel Heights Winery, and every winery that showed up this week to share their story and their wines. You make this worth it. A special thanks for all the other volunteers and the staff of Willamette Valley Winery Association along with a special high-five to Brittany Wooten and Emily Nelson who did a fabulous job of helping keep it all together!
Oregon Pinot Camp is an annual event hosted by 50+ of Oregon’s top wineries in the Willamette Valley, designed to educate and inspire the wine trade. Learn more at oregonpinotcamp.com.