I recently visited Oregon wine country with my friend Denise. We are both big fans of Pinot Noir and had talked about visiting for several years. Any time I mentioned wanting to visit Oregon to people who had been there they would tell me it is a beautiful state. After finally making the trip out there, I am in total agreement. The best description I can provide from the areas of Oregon that I visited, outside of the city of Portland, is that it is very rural with lots of wide open land and farms. Driving through the state in many areas we would see fields of green that stretched far out with mountains off in the distance.

There are several different valleys that make up Oregon wine country. We spent our time in a couple different areas of the Willamette Valley. On our first day of exploring wineries we headed to Southern Willamette Valley to Monmouth and Monroe. Our must see stop on day one was Benton Lane even though it was out of the way from where we were staying. Benton Lane was the first Pinot Noir I ever tried from Oregon and I fell in love with it immediately. Their wine is what got Denise and me talking about visiting Oregon in the first place. Over the course of the day we also visited Airlie, Emerson, Tyee, and Willamette Valley Vineyards. We enjoyed each one for different reasons.

On day two we spent our time in the more popular Dundee Hills area. Unlike the wineries in the southern part of the state, the tasting rooms in Dundee Hills were much closer together. It was easy to hop from place to place over the course of the day and there were bigger crowds to go with it. Some of the more well-known Oregon wineries like Domaine Serene, Domaine Drouhin and Erath can be found here. Even though this area was more populated, each place that we went to still had acres of vineyards surrounding it and the views are amazing.

Before I visited Oregon I had preconceived ideas of what the wineries would be like based on my experiences in Napa and Sonoma. It’s human nature to compare new experiences with past experiences. However, I realized pretty quickly that it’s an unfair comparison. Napa and Sonoma have become iconic to the US wine industry but unfortunately a lot of the wineries are commercialized because of it. Other states have taken a back seat to California, but there is really some spectacular wines that can be found in the other states for a lower cost and much less fanfare. I found that the atmosphere of the Oregon wineries was much more laid back. At some of the places we stopped at we had the owners conducting our tastings and educating us about the wine. It was easy to see that their heart and soul went into making the wine. It made me happy to get to be a part of it, and I’m so glad I visited.

As I am able, I will post additional blogs about the different wineries I visited.