Jamie Goode visits Oregon!!

The wineanorak seems to have had a wonderful time in Oregon!

http://www.wineanorak.com/blog/

Scroll down the left side.

[David M. Bueker]

The entire IPNC sounded like a lot of fun. I hope to make it some day.

It was great looking at Jamie's blog, since I visited the Willamette Valley with a bunch of friends the weekend before IPNC - my first visit, and it was such a great time! My impressions were very similar to Jamie's as far as I could tell - It's totally beautiful there, the weather was perfect, and we met lots of genuinely nice people at every turn.

Best visits of the weekend:
Soter - especially tasting their '97 Blanc des Blancs among the vineyards:
http://flickr.com/photos/gr0m1t/2693647 ... 6320297740
(pictures are from Mike Russell)

Eyrie Vineyards - A great cellar tour at one of the pioneering Willamette Valley wineries with Jason Lett:
http://flickr.com/photos/gr0m1t/2694520 ... 6320297740
Dinner afterwards at Nick's in McMinnville, with a '98 Eyrie Reserve Pinot

Cancilla Cellars - vineyard tour with Ken Cancilla. He's a very engaging guy, and I learned a lot. Oh, and the wine is great too! Very clean and elegant.

Roots - winery tour and extensive barrel tasting with Chris Berg.

Visits I wouldn't do again:
Archery Summit - beautiful facility, good tour, but the wines were overextracted and overoaked unto deadness, and very expensive to boot. Too much sales pitch at the end. My suggestion - buy the Rose and flee!

Domaine Serene - good wines, but expensive. Facility is very slick - like wine Disneyland. Need I say more?

I'd recommend to anyone to go visit!

Dave

I'd recommend to anyone to go visit!
Dave

Absolutely agree.
NJ and I had a great visit to the valley which also was the week before the Pinot Bash.
Bill

[Jenise]

Archery Summit - beautiful facility, good tour, but the wines were overextracted and overoaked unto deadness, and very expensive to boot. Too much sales pitch at the end. My suggestion - buy the Rose and flee!

Domaine Serene - good wines, but expensive. Facility is very slick - like wine Disneyland. Need I say more?

I'd recommend to anyone to go visit!

Dave

Haven't visited any of the wineries you had such good experiences with but will note them for the future. Soter and Eyrie are the only two whose wines I'm actually familiar with. Had to laugh at Archery Summit and Serene though--I don't know anyone who has ever been to either who came away not feeling just as you did. I do love Serenes wines, but the winery behavior once in the tasting room is offputting--and they don't even forgive the cost of admission against purchases. Good as the wines are that leaves a bad taste in one's mouth.

Well, I guess it's no surprise that I liked the tours at the smaller places better. It's much more intimate. At the little places we had access to the people with the vision - the viticulturists and the winemakers, and that makes for a great tour! At the bigger places on the other hand, we talked to the marketing director sometimes, or we were assigned a tour guide. Not the same experience at all.

I wonder though how much I should recommend tours at the really small places? As it turns out, at two of the places I mentioned above, we actually did the tasting part of the visit on the deck outside the winemaker's home, and when we needed to use the restroom, we were traipsing through the house. Of course they were very gracious about it. but it leads me to wonder how much I should recommed that people follow me on on those particular trails. I know I wouldn't be totally happy with strangers coming to my house weekly or even daily, even if they were mostly very nice strangers. Given the current state of the wine market, winemakers must make some sort of arrangement for the inevitablity of wine tourists, but I wonder how much I should encourage visits for the really little guys that work out of their homes. Some folks probably don't mind at all, but for some I imagine it might become a problem.

If you really want to go to a bizarre (small) winery, you need to stop by Carlo & Julian on the way into Carlton (from McMinnville.) They have a funky vegetable garden and chickens and dogs running around. The wine ain't bad,either.

And you're just about a mile from Solena, Ken Wright, Tyrus Evan and Scott Paul with Cana's Feast just a little up the road.

The vet who's treating Fatso's glaucoma is across from Solena so I spend a lot of time in Carlton.

[Jenise]

If you really want to go to a bizarre (small) winery, you need to stop by Carlo & Julian on the way into Carlton (from McMinnville.) They have a funky vegetable garden and chickens and dogs running around. The wine ain't bad,either.

And you're just about a mile from Solena, Ken Wright, Tyrus Evan and Scott Paul with Cana's Feast just a little up the road.

The vet who's treating Fatso's glaucoma is across from Solena so I spend a lot of time in Carlton.

We stopped there last October--unfortunately, the wine was all brett-affected. They need to--literally--clean up their act. But the guys were cool and the winery cats gave me a badly needed cat fix.

Yeah, I thought about "funky" instead of "bizarre."

[Jenise]

Yeah, I thought about "funky" instead of "bizarre."

I'm actually good with a little bit of funk, but what we tasted there was just plain wrong. And it was in ALL their wines. In fact, we mentioned it to Patrick at the Oregon Tasting Room because we saw that he had one of their wines (and at a price like $50ish too) and he mentioned that he'd heard they'd developed a pretty bad problem up there but prior vintages had been okay.

I really, really enjoyed my Oregon trip, which blew away any misconceptions I had. There's some seriously good wine being made here, by some of the best people you're likely to meet in the wine business.
Pinot Noir is the obvious strong point, but Pinot Gris and Chardonnay also excel. I even had a serious Syrah, too. The wine country is quite beautiful.

[Jenise]

I really, really enjoyed my Oregon trip, which blew away any misconceptions I had. There's some seriously good wine being made here, by some of the best people you're likely to meet in the wine business.
Pinot Noir is the obvious strong point, but Pinot Gris and Chardonnay also excel. I even had a serious Syrah, too. The wine country is quite beautiful.

Jamie, I'd be curious as to what those misconceptions are. If you had them, then all of Europe probably does, too.

If you look at Oz Clarke's pocket wine book, for example, Oregon gets a really short and rather negative entry. Here in the UK Oregon simply isn't on people's radar; they mostly have no conception of what Oregon is about. It's seen as some sort of inconsequential 'fringe' wine region - rather than as Burgundy's most serious new world competitor.

[Jenise]

If you look at Oz Clarke's pocket wine book, for example, Oregon gets a really short and rather negative entry. Here in the UK Oregon simply isn't on people's radar; they mostly have no conception of what Oregon is about. It's seen as some sort of inconsequential 'fringe' wine region - rather than as Burgundy's most serious new world competitor.

That was certainly true 40 or so years ago, but things there have been better for long enough (and are still improving) for someone like Oz Clarke to know better now. Glad you found out how good the wines are.