A quick wine week in Oregon

We were invited to visit my sister in her new location in Oregon recently. We took the opportunity to pack in some wine tasting while down there. This post is to give you a flavour of what wines we enjoyed in our quick wine week in Oregon.

We had originally scoped out a few different vineyards. The challenge with going to a location you haven’t been before is you don’t always know distances and time. It has been many, many years since we were last in Oregon let alone near Portland! Most of the ones we had picked were a good day trip for one vineyard. We wanted to ensure we had some good family visiting on our agenda so we opted for locations closer to our location in Portland.

Quick Wine Week in Oregon

We knew we needed to go into Portland as a friend wanted a t-shirt from Deschutes Brewery. T-shirt acquired, we stayed for lunch and a beer and cider. Very good food, and the beer was tasty as well!

Erath Vineyards was on our list as well. They have a tasting room in the Pearl District in Portland. We’ve had the standard fair of their pinot noir in the stores – we wanted to explore their higher end pinots. Wow, did they deliver! We enjoyed two tastings – The Daily Wine Flight, as well as the Estate Wine Flight. Both were very good, and in particular, the Estate Wine Flight introduced us to the Willakia and Knight’s Gambit Estate wines – excellent examples of pinot noir with full primary fruit aromas and on the palate, and some minor oak notes. Check out my wine tasting of the Willakia Pinot Noir below.

We did a comparative of our palate with a Louis Latour 2019 from Burgundy later that evening, provided graciously by our host, my sister. That wine tasting is up on our YouTube channel – a very good to outstanding wine in quality with the ability to age a bit more in the bottle. Wine tasting video here.

More on our Wine Week in Oregon

The next day, just over the border in Vancouver, Washington, we did a detailed tasting at Maryhill Winery. More continental climate wines on offer here, with some full bodied reds – Cabernet Sauvignon, Tempranillo, Sangiovese and Zinfandel. Good wine and the lunch menu is very well suited to the tasting environment. Our search for more very good pinot noir would continue!

Our Final Day of our Wine Week in Oregon

On our final day in Oregon, we sought out Willamette Valley Vineyards tasting room and restaurant in Happy Valley. We had been on a short hike in the morning, completing some obligatory shopping, and then wanted to reward ourselves with a glass of wine. What an excellent experience! Our server was knowledgeable and extremely helpful in guiding us towards the pinot noirs we were looking for from their various offerings. In addition to some lovely reds (of which the Eola-Amity Hills was one) the Sauvignon Blanc we tasted was very good. Our YouTube Wine Tastings are inserted below.

We finished off our trip with our road trip back north by way of Port Angeles. As we wanted to relax with a drink before the Black Ball Ferry departed, we stepped into Pacific Northwest Wonderland Wine. Open for only a few months, it is a bright, cheerful, funky wine bar with a very diverse selection of wine. Their staff was super helpful so we could produce two wine tastings for everyone on our YouTube Channel – a crisp and tasty Vinho Verde (Portugal), and an unexpected complex and nuanced Verdicchio die Castelli di Jesi (Italy).

Enjoy all our wine tastings, and leave a comment if you are interested in a particular wine for me to give a try! More wine posts are available here on our site, and via our YouTube channel link.