McMinnville, OR

We have been in Oregon for 10 days now. It's been raining 7 out of the last 10 days,ugh!

McMinnville is a great little town in the heart of the Willamette valley. It's about 25 miles outside of Portland. Since it has been raining, we don't have much to report. We hit the Farmers market and picked up some great organic veggies, fresh baked bread and a 1/2 slab of ribs from a guy who calls himself "The Rib Slayer". Our campground is right next to an air museum where they have the "Spruce Goose" parked in a really gorgeous building. We hope to hit that, and give a full report in the next couple of days.

Of course, we are in the heart of Pinot country, so we had to hit some wineries. Everytime we post about wineries, we get emails asking what we liked. So, I'll tell you our top picks from the places we hit. Will call this "Our Favorite wines to taste, that we can't afford to buy" list! Most of the "good" Pinots' start at $40 and go up from there, and we just can't bring ourselves to spend that much on a bottle of wine!(plus, the budget doesn't allow it)

We stopped at Panther Creek. They have 2 great single vineyard Pinots, both priced at $42. The Freedom hill vineyard is their flagship. If you enjoy a good Pinot Noir, anyone that produces from Freedom Hill is worthy of trying, if you're willing to pay the price. They also have the Nysa vineyard Pinot. Nysa is more fruity and jammy while Freedom Hill is more earthy and smokey. You can't go wrong with either, but we preferred the "earthy" over "jammy".

We also visited Adelsheim vineyards. They have mostly blended Pinots. We are big fans of the Elisebeth's Reserve ($40). Their "retail" blend was a little to fruit forward for us, but is a good deal at $20.

Archery Summit makes some of the best Pinots we've ever had! Their least expensive is the "premier Cuvee" and that starts at $36. Our absolute favorite is the Arcus Vineyard ($60) We were lucky enough to pick up 2 of these, at cost, when I was selling wine back in Michigan. They are safely stored away, awaiting our landing early next year! They charge $10 for tasting at Archery, but they always open some the best bottles in the house.(we split a tasting, which makes it reasonable, and at $10, they are not shy with the pours) Even though we don't buy anything, its fun to taste some truly great wines. They even taste the "estate", that usually save for members only.

We located our other favorite Pinot producer, Patricia Greene, only to find out they only do tasting on Memorial Day and Thanksgiving day. What's up with that? We left there disappointed, but still love her wines. Our top pick for Patricia Greene is her "Shea Vineyard" Pinot, I think its around $35. We did find out some disappointing news. Patricia's block of the Shea Vineyard just got replanted, so it probably won't be available for quite a few years. If you find any Shea out there, buy it up!

So, that's it for now. Look for a report on the Spruce Goose, some more tasting notes and an updated map on travels through July in the coming days .

-Rich-

(Pics borrowed from the winemakers websites)