Wine Tasting in
OregonSeptember 5-9, 2003
Wine Tasting in
OregonIn mid-August we were chatting with Mike and Kathy Thomas about the upcoming Grapefest in nearby Grapevine, TX. For the past serveral years we've gone to a tasting, then adjourned with some friends to their pool to cool off and then fix a pasta dinner for the group. That's when they told us they were going to Oregon the weekend before to do a wine tasting tour through the North Willamette Valley. This immediately sounded attractive. We had soon to expire AA vouchers left from our unexpected stay in San Juan last fall and had been discussing a wine tour, but Napa is so crowded and we'd been dawdling in making a decision. So we chatted them up about joining in. They talked with Dale and Celina, changed the rent car to mini-van and we were off.
Of course we immediately started scouring wine shops in Dallas and watching wine lists for Oregon wines. Since we were only going to be tasting three days, Mike suggested that on the first day we get an early start and get down to Salem. Start working wineries from there and to the west, eventually winding up in McMinnville. The next day we'd work the wineries in the "Red Hills of Dundee" and wind up in Newburg. The last day we'd head north and west and work until closing, then head back in for our final night in Portland.
The following a description of the tour in the order that we visited the different wineries. The impressions are mine. Deanne took notes at every tasting and those are available on the Tasting Notes link.
Willamette Valley Vinyards was the easiest to find, with vineyards perched above I5 just south of Salem, and a good first stop. The tasting room staff was very knowlegable and very helpful. For a while we had the tasting room to ourselves and they had plenty of time to discuss the various wines they were tasting and the differences in their production. They work several vineyards arouhd the region including Tualatin Estates and Griffin Creek. As WVV they produce a "Pinot Noir -- Whole Cluster" using a method called carbonic maceration where the grapes are fermented whole and on the stem -- and not crushed until after the fermentation process. It's very young tasting similar to a Neuveau Boujeleais. Also learned that Pinot Gris and Pinot Blanc were spontaneous mutations of Pinot Noir that had been grafted out and grown separately. It was also here that the girls found a jar of chocolate Cabernet Sauvignon fudge, and were lured to the dark side of accenting red wines with a taste of chocolate. This haunted us for the rest of the trip.
Honeywood Winery was a stop we made primarily because it was in our path and we didn't want to go very far without stopping. It turned out to be mainly a stoor for their fruit wines. It would be a great place to go to pick up a split of loganberry wine for your grandmother. In fact, their only client while we were there was doing just that. Their grape wines were also geared to that palate, which was not what any of our group was looking for. It was however the first place I tasted a Marechal Foch -- named after the French field marshal who was the hero of the Marne. It produces a wine similar to a Burgundy, but darker and more intense.
Orchard Heights Winery is nestled back in among farms between Salem and Dallas. They lived up to their reputation for friendliness, bustling about finding us a picnic area amongst the weddings they were setting up for. They moved chairs down around a table by the horseshoe pit and served us the fruit and cheese plates we ordered out there. Curiously, their owners also own a macadamia orchard in Hawaii and so they had some good chocolates and some tropical flavored wines. The mango flavored Pinot Gris made good mango mimosas. Those who must have chocolate decided the chocolate covered macadamia nuts were a good find.
Chateau Bianca Winery is right off the highway the cloasest to the coast that we got. They also had a Marechal Foch blended in a meritage.
Van Duser Vineyards - first time I bought their Pino Gris it awas a label buy -- go figure, it won “Best Label” at the 2003 Wine Literary Awards. The whimiscal Zephra is like something out of a mid-summer's night dream. We wound up with a case. The view back in theVan Duser corridor is vast and sweeping. Winery dog "Bonnie",.
Witness Tree Vineyard - off the beaten path some well finished wines. The view up the hill to the namsake tree is impressive. Annie was immediately our friend. Winery dog border collie.
Sokol Blosser Winery - beautiful view out over the vinyards and the Willamette valley. Walk through vineyards and a great picnic deck.
Erath Vineyards - on the way to the winery 4 deer stood in the road in front of us -- finally crossing into the hazelnut orchard. Lots of people in the tasting room, friendly but rushed.
Bella Vida - coming out of Erath we spotted a new sign, for a vineyard that wasn't on any of our maps. The sign said the tasting room was open so we wheeled onto the gravel road and started up the hill. It wsa a little steep until we made the curve to the right where it became very steep. Just a little to steep for our heavily loaded mini-van which couldn't get enough traction. So we backed up and made another run at it -- with the same result. We were backing down back to the main road when Ted (from the vantage of a tracked crawler) encouraged us to back up further and make an even faster approach. It was wild, we threw a lot of gravel and screamed quite a bit, but Dale kept the hammer down and we made it to the top. The view from that height was grand, overlooking the Erath and Maresh vineyards. The tasting room is a new steel building that they are starting to put landscaping around. Inside, Allison was serving tastings of their first bottling in 2001. One was a blend of their grapes (solely a Dijon clone) along with some Tori Mor, the other was purely their grape and had a nice peppery finish. We decided to puchase a split case and ship it back. When the sale finished, Allison did a little happy dance and told us that was the first full case sold out of their newly added tasting room.
Maresh Vineyards - has a red barn converted into a tasting room and Sam instatnly treated us like old friends. Maresh sells their wines to wineries and occasionally has estate and reserve bottlings that are solely their fruit. A Rex Hill Maresh Estate Pinot Noir was superb. The also have a guest cabin squeezed between the vinyards and the hazelnut orchard that would be a fantastic place for three couples to base their wine tours from.
Torii Mor - has a tasting room set in a deep wooded glen. It has a few small rooms decorated in a very serene Japanese style. We happend to arrive just as a running club that was wine touring came through, so it was really more like a cocktail party. The crowd was friendly and conversations were all over the place, from wineries to restaurants to rubber nipples. A heavy thundershower moved through while we were tasting. As we left we were chasing the edge of the rain and saw a hawk fly into the edge. He dropped a wing feather that drifted down and landed on the pavement just in front of us.
Duck Pond Cellars - the tasting room samples from both their local Duck Pond label (pinots and chardonney) and their Columbia Valley West Wind label (semillion, cabernet sauvignon, merlot, etc.) Surprising was the methode champaignois pinot noir, and we got a taste out of their very last bottle of sparkling pinot gris.
Laurel Ridge Winery has a large tasting room that is a rebuild of the an old barn overlooking their vineyards. When we were there, the view was somewhat stark as they'd had to pull up 50 acres of vines. Inside, David was a friendly host. They were tasting a couple of champagnes, err, excuse me, wines of the methode champenoise, that were very palatable. Thier Pinot Noir Port had quite a pepper taste. We wound up with bottles of both.
Kramer Vineyards was probably our favorite stop. This tiny winery (20 acres) is well back in the hilly countryside with the tasting room up on a hill that overlooks forest to one side and the vineyards to the other. There's a deck surrounded by flowers and this view that is where we decided to have our picnic after the tasting. We wound up buying two bottles for lunch. A sudden cloudburst right at the end of our lunch sent us fleeing back to the tasting room where we decided to shop a mixed case home. During the tasting, we were the only ones in the tasting room and had a nice chat about the winery and it's history. One of the interesting wines was their 2000 Carmine which was a grape that we hadn't encountered yet. It's a modern hybrid between Cabernet Sauvignon, Carignane and a Grenache. (Note that this is a single grape varietal based on a modern crossing program, not a blended wine.)
Elk Cove Vineyards is just up the road from Kramer. Their tasting room is a large glass walled room that has views of the vineyards on three sides. We probably would have spent more time there, but we had a bit of a drive ahead of us and we were going to try to make two more wineries.
Oak Knoll Winery is one of the older wineries in the region but grow none of their own grapes, buying from nearby vineyards instead (such as Five Mountains Vineyard). The Vuylsteke's are a cornerstone of the regional wine production and their five sons have contributed at Tualatin Vineyard, Sokol Blossur, Rex Hill and Erath. They had a 2-for-1 case clearance on their 1997 Pinot Noir as it is at it's peak and they need to make room for the newer vintages. We decided this was too good a deal to let slip by and shipped two cases home for our "house red". They also had a wine made from the ntaive Amarican Niagra grape, which tasted so much like grape juice that you'd have to hide it from your kids. While the tasting room was just an end of the winery/warehouse the winery cat "Bob" got bounus points from us.
We tried to make it to make it with a few minutes to spare to Ponzi Vineyards, but must have missed Scholls Ferry Rd. The clock went on past 5pm and we started heading back to Portland.
TASTING NOTES
PHOTO ALBUM GALLERY1
PHOTO ALBUM GALLERY2
All images are Copyright 2003
Deanne Eskridge. The feather just fell from the sky.
