Pacific Northwest Cuisine Beverage Pairing — Dungeness Crab, Wild Salmon, and Willamette Pinot

Oregon's wine industry began in earnest in 1966 when David Lett (Eyrie Vineyards) and Dick Erath planted the first modern-era Pinot Noir vines in the Willamette Valley. The 1979 Paris Tasting of Oregon wines — when Lett's 1975 Pinot Noir outscored multiple Burgundy Premiers Crus in a Gault Millau competition — established Willamette Valley as a world-class Pinot Noir region. Washington State's wine industry developed alongside at Chateau Ste. Michelle from 1967. The farm-to-table movement in Portland (Le Pigeon, Ava Gene's, Ox) has created the culinary infrastructure that celebrates this regional pairing ecosystem.

The Pacific Northwest of North America — Oregon, Washington State, and British Columbia — has developed one of the world's most coherent regional food-and-beverage identities in the past four decades: the same cool, wet climate that produces Dungeness crab, wild Chinook salmon, chanterelle mushrooms, razor clams, and Walla Walla sweet onions also produces some of the world's finest Pinot Noir (Willamette Valley), Riesling (Washington State), and craft cider (BC Okanagan). The terroir principle — what grows together, goes together — achieves near-perfect expression here. Wineries like Adelsheim, Ponzi, and Domaine Drouhin Oregon in the Willamette Valley; Chateau Ste. Michelle in Washington State; and Mission Hill and Burrowing Owl in BC's Okanagan have established world-class wine credentials that pair directly with the region's extraordinary produce.

FOOD PAIRING: Provenance 1000's Pacific Northwest chapter is built around this regional pairing ecosystem — Dungeness crab (→ Eroica Riesling, Blanc de Blanc sparkling), wild salmon (→ Willamette Pinot Noir, Oregon Pinot Gris), chanterelle risotto (→ aged Willamette Pinot Noir), Pacific halibut (→ Oregon Pinot Gris, BC Chardonnay), and PNW beef (→ Washington Cabernet Sauvignon, Leonetti Cellar). This guide is the dedicated companion to Provenance 1000's Pacific Northwest chapter.