Relaxation and wine, who could ask for more?

September 25, 2007
Fairview, OR

We thought about things and decided to change our plans for the Portland area just a bit. Sunday and Monday turned into relaxation days, with me catching up on bills, web forums, emails, etc. and Geri watching some “chick flicks” she’d been saving. It was good to decompress a bit and get organized. I started planning our route back to Arizona, since we’re planning to take the “non-Interstate” route, and began to dust off the “things we gotta do when we get back” list. We did a little shopping, taking advantage of the lack of a sales tax in Oregon.

Today, we did some wine touring. The main area of the Willamette Valley is to the southwest of Portland, and we’re parked to the east of the city, so we weren’t as well positioned as we could have been, but we had a nice day anyway. We left after the morning rush, so we were able to head west through Portland to Beaverton, then south to the wine area. Since we didn’t have a lot of time (OK, we didn’t get the earliest start ever recorded – and we decided to leave the pups home), it was more of a focused affair. We decided we’d better get some lunch, so we found a local eatery (The Penguin Café) in beautiful downtown Carlton (2 stop signs; no traffic lights) where we had sandwiches. They had home-made milkshakes, which I’d have loved, but I couldn’t see that as being a precursor to a wine tasting. Geri had a root beer float with no negative effect, so maybe I was being too cautious.

We visited the Carlton Winemakers Studio, which is a shared facility used by about 10 different brands. This worked out well, since we were able to get 2 flights of 3 wines each from 5 different winemakers. We started with the Pinot Noirs and then shifted to the Syrahs. We had our own little voting session and chose the consensus “winner” from each flight. We picked up a bottle of each to take home with us. We picked up an Andrew Rich 2004 Vin de Tabula Rasa Syrah blend and a Lumpkin Family 2005 Lazy River Vineyard Pinot Noir.

As it was starting to get late, we decided to choose one additional winery for a stop on the way home. This wasn’t as much of a compromise as it seems because a) we’ll be in Harrisburg next week, and about as far away from “wine country” as we are now, so we’re not done “wining”; and b) Geri’s making a pot of sauce with pork cutlets for dinner. Thus motivated, we thought about stopping at Domaine Drouhin, one of the “big names” in Oregon Pinot. Then I read in the planning notes that they’re only open Wednesday – Sunday for tasting. Then I realized that Archery Summit, one of the most highly-rated (along with Beaux Frères and Bergström) Pinot producers, was right next door. Woo-hoo!

We had a wonderful tasting of three Pinots, two of which are not in general release (this means that they’re only sold to their “wine club”). As a bonus, they were pouring a limited bottling of a single clone from their Renegade Ridge vineyard, from the 2000 vintage. It was interesting to compare it to the finished (i.e., blended) version from 2005. We ended up buying two bottles, both from the 2005 vintage. The first is the Looney Vineyard Ribbon Ridge Pinot Noir and the second is the Renegade Ridge Estate Dundee Hills Pinot Noir. Both will require some cellaring, which should be fine since we have just a tiny bit of space in the “cellar” at home.

And the sauce and cutlets were absolutely wonderful, as expected. We had a nice dinner at home, and have quite a bit of sauce left over for future meals. Geri found some fresh-made linguini at a local market, which went great with the meal along with a simple 2005 Chianti.

That’s it for today. Tomorrow, we’ll try to get the Mount Hood trip in, which is “iffy” because the weather’s supposed to change for the worse soon.