Day-06: Oregon Wine Country

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Bulletin - Time 0001: The government stopped! (Good news for the Helium lovers of the world, the BLM has been funded to continue operations and thereby relieve the "shortage". Let the balloons fly!)

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Woke up to a mixed bag of weather, intermittent rain, low flying clouds aka fog, sunshine, all combining to make for a beautiful morning in the vineyards.

Just to recap the recent weather, did I mention the wind and rain? Some quotes from "locals" regarding the weekend's weather:

• "...it was the storm of the century."
• "...the worst since 19__" (fill in the blank dependent upon whoever is talking)
• "...just like an east coast hurricane."
• "They don't even report winds below 120 mph up here..."
• "Just another sign of global warming."
• "It's ruinous for the grapes."
• "It's great for the grapes."

To calibrate the severity of the wind and rain, judge for yourself; Jim Cantore was no where to be seen. That could mean two things, one that the storm was unworthy of Jim or secondly, the weather was so severe that Jim couldn't get to the scene, take your pick.

Went downstairs at the inn for a hot cup of coffee before taking a brief morning walk. 

At 9 AM all eight guests showed up promptly at the breakfast table. For me, I already knew breakfast would be a challenge as the morning's special was to be coconut muffins, melon balls, eggs florentine (I'll just take out the spinach), "chicken" sausage, OJ & coffee. Two problems here, the eggs florentine was presented as a soufflé loaded with spinach inseparable from the eggs and as we all know sausage doesn't naturally come from chicken. Now for a place that touts itself as natural and organic, unnatural sausage is a little inconsistent. Anyway, good company, good conversation and again an opportunity to meet people different in many ways than ourselves but similar in life style and travel.

Sheila "the scribe" complimented the inn in their guest book, and after laying down a few more bucks for wine, glasses, coffee mugs, etc., we headed down the lane, through the vineyard, taking a few more pictures and were on our way by 11 AM.

We drove into the village of Amity for a visit to the Amity Vineyards, our first of several tastings for the day. Amity Vineyards is for sale, so if we play this right we could buy the ice cream store in Florida and the winery in Oregon. Just looking for co-investors, let me know.

Second on our list was the Stoller Vineyards. Here we had more wine, cheese and crackers and views of one of the most scenic vineyards in the area. Stoller apparently ages case loads of wine in a private wine cellar and reserve in a Scottsdale, AZ residence. We'll need to investigate this further.

Stoller Prefers Clientele
In Electric Cars

Nice Looking Stoller Sampler

We proceeded into Dundee, Oregon where we drove to the Maresh (pronounced Marsh) Vineyards. We'd been turned on to Maresh by Navy friends. Unfortunately the Maresh operation was closed for the day, but we did get a couple of pictures. From Maresh we moved up the road about a quarter mile to the Erath Vineyard tasting room. More wine, more purchases, the collection is growing.

Nick with Don Lange

Who Says A Label Doesn't Sell?
It's About The Fly!

Departing Erath I noticed an interesting sign for the Lange Vineyards; if you look at the picture you'll probably understand why it caught my eye. In any case, Lange turned out to be my favorite of the day's vineyards, perhaps because of the staff, hopefully because of the wine and certainly because the owners Wendy and Don Lange actually came out and introduced themselves. Perhaps they were fooled by the fact that I was carrying out one of their cases; what they didn't know was that the case only had two bottles of wine. Perhaps it was because I was wearing one of their hats. In any case, nice folks and another instance of a native Iowan moving to Oregon to pursue a career and livelihood in the wine industry. 






Upon departing Lange in Dundee we headed into Portland. A last minute opportunity presented itself to pick-up replacement AAA books and maps so with a brief detour to Lake Oswego our travel guidance had been restored.

L to R: Sheila, Nick, Steve & Sandy

After check-in at the DoubleTree Hotel in Portland we proceeded back across the Willamette River into downtown Portland where we met up with Navy friends Sandy and Steve at the local Chart House, located high on the hill overlooking the rivers of Portland. Steve had been the Comm Officer on the USS Badger while we lived in Hawaii. Sandy and Steve have been long-time Portland residents both dedicated to careers in teaching and now in retirement leading efforts in the Portland area to advance the skill sets of and opportunities for disadvantaged children of the area.

Returned to the hotel and made plans for moving in into Washington.

Look Familiar? It's Our
Chariot for the Trip.