Willamette Valley Wine Tasting

On our Spring Break trip, we decided that we would check out some wineries in Oregon on our first day.

Turns out, the Willamette Valley is quite the distance from Vancouver....

But first, a little background.

The Willamette (rhymes with Dammit) Valley basically stretches along I-5 south of Portland (although most fo the wineries looked like they were west of the highway) until Eugene, a 250 km long valley. Because mountains surround three sides of this region, it has an almost Mediterranean climate which is perfect for the very difficult to grow Pinot Noir grape. In fact, I have heard, many times, that Willamette Pinot Noir is the closest you can come to Burgundy without actually being in Burgundy.

According to my second hand copy of The Oxford Companion to Wine (which I just picked up in a used book store in Penticton), the Willamette Valley has been producing good quality wine since the 90s and has focused on making high quality wines rather than a lot of cheap wine.  Still, there are 21,000 acres under wine production compared to a little over 10,000 acres in the Okanagan.

After talking to a couple of people there, we realized that the thing to do would be to stay in McMinnville as there are numerous wineries there and there are also tasting rooms in the downtown area that you can stumble between. There are also some fancy spas to keep better halves happy and content.

However, we didn't go there.

I looked on Trip Advisor for the top ten winery experiences and made a list, complete with addresses, thinking that we could probably visit at least four of them.

We made it to one.

By the time we rolled up to the gates of Domaine Serene (number one of the Trip Advisor list), it was already 4pm - even though we had left the lower mainland at 7am.

We first parked our car in a giant parking lot - this was a much larger scale place than most in the Okanagan - think Mission Hill. We then wandered around the area to what we thought was the tasting room - and read a sign called "The Clubhouse". Confused, I looked around for golfers or a golf course but, upon finding none, decided that this must be a fancy name for the tasting room - which it was.

Wearing my Deadpool T-Shirt, we strode into the clubhouse and, after being greeted by the three (!) young ladies at the foyer, we made our way to the tasting bar.

I have to say that I was a little excited - when we went to the Vancouver Wine Festival, there wasn't any representation from Oregon so I was keen on trying some of their wines.

Looking over the tasting menu, we had two choices - the 'basic' flight for $20 and the 'prestige' fight for $40. These prices were definitely like Napa, not like the Okanagan. Looking over the choices, I decided that we may not be here again for a long time so I bit the bullet and chose the $40 prestige flight (which my wife and I split).

The flight included two wines from their sister (?) winery in France and three of their own Pinot Noir wines.

The two wines from France were very nice - sorry, no tasting notes - as were the local Pinot Noir wines but, by far, our favourite was the 2014 Evenstad Reserve Pinot Noir. Interesting, we liked it quite a lot more than the 2015 Evenstad, even though the 2015 had more points. Mind you, after we made the purchase, the pourer mentioned that he had decanted the 2014 but not the 2015.

If we bought six bottles of wine, we would get our $40 back - however, with the wines costing between $70 and $95, we opted on buying just one - the 2014 Evenstad (which we still have at home).

At this point, we had to make a decision. Were we going to continue on to yet another winery or stick around the clubhouse? I felt my somewhat slimmer wallet and decided that we still had a lot of holiday left so maybe it was better to visit more wineries another time.

We ordered a couple glasses of the Evenstad Pinot Noir, a charcuterie plate, and sat outside on the patio of the winery, enjoying the view of the Willamette Valley. Although it was a bit of a pricey visit, the experience was worth it.