Trip Report: Wine Tasting in the Willamette Valley
Finally got out to Oregon’s Willamette Valley to do some wine tastin’, picture takin’, and relaxin’. The first thing I noticed while driving from winery to winery is all the dysentery is how they have other stuff planted besides grapes. Drive through any major wine region around the world and you’re likely to find every available square inch under vine. The Willamette Valley has a feel that Oregon has some other stuff going on besides wine, like hazelnuts.
Sidebar: hazelnuts taste nothing like you’d expect mostly because all you’ve been exposed to is hazelnut flavoring in your coffee. Like most other things, the flavor has drifted far from the source material.
We stayed in Carlton, OR at the aptly named Carlton Inn. The Carlton Inn is everything a Bed and Breakfast should be: nice, outside space, inside space, friendly, and good food. The proprietors knew just about everyone in the valley and had tons of recommendations. Downtown Carlton – a one-road stretch that is about 2000 feet long – features several tasting rooms from surrounding wineries. This is typical of small-town Willamette Valley life, the towns have tastings so that you don’t need to go driving through the hillside like a maniac. You are free to stumble through their streets like a maniac, as it were.
In order to taste a wide swath of wines, we stopped into
The Horse Radish in downtown Carlton. The staff was so friendly and so happy to see us I thought they actually knew The Wife from somewhere. We got a big cheese plate, a flight of Oregon Pinots from the tasting bar, and settled onto one of the couches to watch the afternoon to by.
Out in the valley, stops of note included Anne Amie and Argyle. Anne Amie sits a few miles outside of Carlton. The Wife and I tasted while the tasting room staff allowed The Daughter to crawl around the room unfettered. Anne Amie’s Pinot Gris was rated best in Oregon by the New York Honkin’ Times. After tasting it, I agreed. Their Pinot Gris is blended with grapes from several different sites to give it a rounder, softer feel than one often finds in a Pinot Gris. This one has it all: fruit, acid, floral, and there is some wine in there too…
Notice no Maryland on the list.
Besides being home to the Argyle Winery tasting room, the Town of Dundee also lays claim to the biggest traffic bottleneck in the valley. Oregon Route 99W goes from four lanes to two and the traffic frustrates both locals and tourists alike. Fortunately we watched all this unfold form the safety of the Argyle Winery front porch. Argyle’s flight took you through three levels of their Pinot Noir and tossed in some of their fantastic sparkling wines. Theirs was the most sophisticated and Napa-like of the tasting rooms we visited. Nice, polished operation.
In total, we were floored by the quality we found in and around the Willamette Valley. Oregon and go wine for wine with almost any region in the world and when considered on a price-to-quality ratio, the region is a treasure of good wine and good times. It’s not just Pinot Noir either. Syrah and Cabernet (what Oregonian’s call “warm weather grapes”) thrive around Southern Oregon and the wineries pour a range of everything. Willamette Valley is a must visit for wine lovers.
The Carlton Inn
648 West Main Street
Carlton, OR 97111
(503) 852-7506
The Horse Radish
211 West Main Street
Carlton, OR 97111
(503) 852-6656
Anne Amie
6580 NE Mineral Springs Road
Carlton, OR 97111
Argyle Winery
691 Highway 99W
Dundee, Oregon 97115
Special offer from our sponsors at WineChateau.com: Get 50% off shipping when you buy 6 or more bottles of Italian wine with coupon code “vino08″
