Wine tasting in Oregon - a trip report (sort of long)

[nolanfan34]

Since there are some wine buffs on here, I thought I'd report back with a few recommendations from the trip my wife and I took over the last few days.

For Christmas this year, we decided to spend a few days in the Willamette Valley in Oregon to do some wine tasting and shopping, instead of exchanging gifts.

First, some background on our wine pedigrees before reading my thoughts and reviews. Due to a relatively tight budget the past few years, we've mostly been in the $10/bottle market, and those are the value wines that I usually target in the stores. But we've been tasting in Southeast Washington a few times before, and also have been to the Willamette Valley in the past as well. So while I'm still developing my palette, I feel that I'm to the point where I can recognize a good bottle when I find it, and am willing to spend a few bucks more for a nice bottle to cellar for a couple of years. (Having a brother-in-law who used to be the wine sommelier at Charlie Trotters also has helped me learn about wine.)

Onto the report...

Lodging
I booked a room here for our stay. We're big fans of the McMenamins chain of hotels and bars, and the Grand Lodge was no exception. The Lodge is a former Masonic home, which has been restored into a hotel, with restaurants, bars, a movie theatre, and spa and soaking pool.

The lodging is mostly European style, with shared restrooms on each floor. And the rooms are very early 1900s-like with their decor - meaning there aren't TV's in the room. McMenamins hotels usually have a lot of artwork, and this one was no exception. The fact that they're able to buy these old buildings, renovate and restore them, and somehow make them profitable is very encouraging.

Wine tasting
We headed out Friday morning to hit a few wineries. My wife had done some research the day before, and found roughly 20 different tasting rooms within a 30 mile radius of our Forest Grove hotel. Of course our wine budget was only about $100, so I figured we'd hit 4 or 5 wineries at the most this trip. But, it shows that you could easily make a 4 or 5 day trip to this part of Oregon, and have new wineries to check out every day.

Cuneo cellars was the first winery we checked out. They're a small winemaker, specializing in red wines only. The owner and winemaker is Italian, so they had some unique red blends that aren't typical for the region. This included a fantastic Bordeaux-style blend from their Cana's Feast label that was slightly out of our price range at $40, but was a really smooth wine. Gives me something to look forward to as our wine budget grows throughout the years.

Cuneo had a wonderful 2002 Pinot Noir, which is the grape the Willamette Valley is best known for. At $25, I felt it was a bargain as one to put away for a year or two. We picked up a bottle of that, along with a $20 bottle of an Italian-style red table wine that will be a great partner to a pasta or beef meal.

Next up was Anne Amie winery. This winery used was known as Chateau Benoit the last time we were there. It was one that we really liked last time around, but it seems to be making an awkward transition at the moment. They have new wines under their Anne Amie label, but are still selling Chateau Benoit wines in the store. But they don't offer tastings of the Benoit wines at the winery. Strange.

Anyway, this place was a slight disappointment. Their Pinot I thought was pretty ordinary, and had too much of a tannic feel to me. My wife did really like their Pinot Gris though. Doing a little reading on the description, I figured out why - she doesn't like the "oaky" taste of some whites, and this Pinot Gris has 25% of it's batch fermented in stainless steel barrels. She really likes whites that come from stainless steel, and this was no exception. The wine was crisp and smooth, with melon and tangerine flavors. We picked up a bottle for $18. They did have a pretty good Pinot Noir Port for $36.

We hit one of our favorites next. Erath is a winery that produces one of the pinot noirs that's available nationally. They distribute a basic pinot in the $10-$15 range that you can find anywhere in the US.

Visiting their winery though, you get the chance to check out their reserve wines that are hard to find in stores, even in the Northwest.

Their 1999 reserve Pinot was excellent, with notes of cherry and blackberry, and a nice mouthfeel. It seemed like a bargain at $19, so we picked up two bottles for gifts, and took home a half-bottle for ourselves for $10. They also had exactly one bottle left of their 2002 Dolcetto, which is a fairly rare Italian varietal for the US. It's immediately drinkable, and seemed to be a really fun wine for a pizza or pasta meal, so we snapped up that last bottle for $20.

Erath also had a great late-harvest 2002 Gewurztraminer. It doesn't seem to be available on their web site, but it was just packed with fruit, and of course a very high residual sugar count. The guy facilitating the tasting said he's even heard of people putting it on pancakes, it's "thick" enough for that. I agreed that sounded like a pretty darn good idea. In the end $20 for a dessert wine was a little more than we wanted to spend.

The last winery we went to was Laurel Ridge. After tasting about 20 different wines to this point, my taste buds were starting to get worn out, but I sucked it up for 8 more wines.

Laurel Ridge appeared to be a newer winery, but they had a few hits. The winemaker himself was doing the tastings, so it was fun to hear him talk about his approach for each of the wines. He certainly was pretty excited talking about them. His reserve Pinot's were very solid. My wife liked the CMV reserve, which was fairly smooth and fruity. I prefered his Wirtz reserve pinot, which had deeper blackberry and spice flavors, and had more "kick". Both were $36 though, and out of our price range by that time.

We did pick up two bottles of a Pinot Noir Rose for $18 total. We hadn't seen a Pinot Rose before, which was kind of cool and made it a must buy. The winemaker described it as a cheese and cracker, or "hot tub wine", great for the spring or summer.

Summary and afterthoughts

Yes, we only ended up hitting 4 wineries. But we picked up 7 bottles for ourselves, and two for gifts, for about $140 total, which I think was a pretty good haul for our budget. I really liked Cuneo Cellars the best. I really love red wines, and across the board I thought they were top notch.

Some other thoughts from the trip:

- We bought a backgammon set before we left, which I had never played before. I totally pwned my wife at it, making it similar to chess, and Trivial Pursuit.
- McMenamins beer kicks ass. Beer on a nitro tap also kicks ass. McMenamin's Porter on nitro kicks the most ass possible.
- There were two random Euro-style roundabouts in the middle of nowhere outside of Forest Grove. Just cemented Oregon as the weird place I already thought it was. Fun to visit though.