This is a belated posting of my notes on a tour of a few vinyards in the Willamette Valley.
No detailed tasting notes will be posted. Only my impressions of the various Wineries.
Those not familiar with the Willamette Valley should note that this was our personal choice of Wineries. There are somewhere around a hundred wineries in the area, and these are in no way represented to be anything but a somewhat random selection.
My daughter and my new son-in-law gave my wife and me a night at Wine Country Farm B&B near Dayton for October 28 as a thank you present for our help with their wedding.
Since we are around four hours from there, we decided to get a room in Portland Friday, giving us a more unhurried trip.
Saturday Morning, after spending an hour or two at Powell's (a Portland institution of a bookstore), we started winetasting our way to the B&B.
Our first stop was Ponzi, and the winery didn't leave a mark, positive or negative on my memory.
I think the next was Cooper Mountain. I believe that's the winery where the pourer demonstrated how the same grape, the same year, handled by the same wine makers could vary depending on the vinyard the grapes grew in. We were impressed enough to buy several of the Pinot Noirs.
Next came Oak Knoll. Two things stood out there. One was the American Grapes (Vitis labrusca) that they have made quite good wine from.
The wine made from Niagara Grapes (white) "Grape Eruption" we thought the better, and that's what we bought. Aroma of Currants, and the minor, but definite note of the sharp scent you'd get if you bit into a grape vine. The taste was simple, resembling a white grape juice. Overall very good, but not really a food wine.
The second thing of note was there second Pinot Noir, Arcachon, which they declared not good enough to put their name on. Maybe not, but at $5 a bottle, it was definitely the buy of our trip. We liked the other Pinot Noirs, and a Chardonet, etc. well enough to buy, but filled out the case wih 5 or 6 bottles of Arcachon.
We headed toward our B&B, and on the way stopped for a belated lunch.
After check in we went to a few nearby wineries for tastings (and could have gone to a half dozen others, we picked up a few whites at Erath Vinyards.
We returned to Wine Country Farms, they were conducting a tasting, we enjoyed most of their offerings, especially their cider, and their Muller Thurgau, but also bought their semi-sweet Reisling.
And then to bed.
Notes on Wine Country Farms B&B, we liked it. YMMV. We stayed at one of the rooms in the house. I understand there are also detached cottages. The informal feeling of the main house might be off-putting, or might be just to your taste.
The next day after a very good breakfast at the B&B, we set out for some more tasting before heading home.
Note to others: Check when the tasting rooms open before setting out! We didn't go to one of the wineries on the list because I didn't notice the 1 PM opening. If I had, I could have reversed the loop, and caught it.
We headed south, most of the wines have "Salem" as the city of bottling, though I'd describe the region as around Amity.
The first winery that Sunday was Coelho, in downtown Amity. The most memorable was a port style Pinot Noir, athough we picked up some regular Pinot Noir too.
Then to Amity Cellars. Considering the genesis of our trip, we couldn't resist picking up a couple bottles of Wedding Dance Reisling. We also liked a couple of the Pinot Noirs we tasted. I don't remember the details of what they tasted like, but I do remember tasting one Pinot, mmm, very nice, another, very nice, and then their 2000 Wine Makers Reserve, Wow!. I bought a bottle at $40. I also took a chance on their 1985 Willamette Valley Pinot Noir for $75. That wasn't one of the wines on the tasting, and we haven't opened it yet, so my fingers are still crossed.
After Amity weheaded Bethel Heights, Cristom, and Witness Tree. The details mostly blur, but I remember that at Cristom, they had already sold out of their Viognier, but Witness Tree had some we liked well enough to buy.
After that we were pretty much wineried out, and headed to McMinnville, where we had an early dinner at Bistro Maison. To keep it on topic, although we were not in the mood for wine, the prices on the win list seemed reasonable by US Restaurant standards.
We found that we liked Pinot Noir much more than we had thought, we plan to compare Oregon Pinots with California, and see if it's just Oregon. My wife has found only one Pinot Grigio that she liked, until Oregon, most of the Oregon ones were good. We have not been Chardonnay fans, neither of the oakier, what I think of as California style, or the unoaked steely but the Oregon Chardonnays were quite good. We just finished a bottle of Oak Knoll, ironically labeled "Unoaked Chardonnay", and quite enjoyed it.