West Coast Tour - part 5

We woke up early on Day 8 to start our self-guided wineries tour. We wanted to hit all three major Oregon AVAs along I-5 within 2 days: Rogue, Umpqua, and Willamette Valley. Our first planned stop was to the perfect trio of shops in the Rogue Valley. All next door to each other was a winery, cheese shop, and a chocolate shop. Our plan was spoiled when we arrived at the wine tasting room, Daisy Creek, at 11am and it wasn't open yet. I guess some Oregonians don't drink before noon. At the chocolate shop, Lille Belle Farms Chocolate, we purchased an assortment of chocolate truffles with our favorite being the Smokey Blue Cheese. We were a bit skeptical about the blue cheese and chocolate combination, but WOW! It was really good. We liked it so much we're already planning a return trip.

I don't know why we ended up skipping the cheese shop, Rogue Creamery. I think it had something to do with the warm weather, the long road trip, and no refrigeration. Now that we have more time and can research a bit more, we're disappointed we skipped a place that gets such glowing reviews in so many food blogs. Plus, I think every Oregon winery we stopped at afterward said something like "if you haven't been, you need to go to Rogue Creamery". Our only consolation is that we were able to try their blue cheese in the Lille Belle truffles.

Driving further north, we stopped at two wineries: Del Rio winery, in the Rogue Valley AVA and Henry Estate winery in the Umpqua Valley AVA, before finding a hotel in the Willamette Valley (~20 miles south of Portland)....

Day 9 was a Monday and it turns out that Mondays, as a winery host put it, are the "winemakers holiday". Fortunately, we found that not all the wineries were closed. The first winery we went to was Archery Summit. The tasting fee was a whopping $15 for only four pours (and no souvenir wine glass), but it was worth every penny. The wines are amazing. However, at around $100 per bottle, they were a bit pricey for our budget.

Views from Archery Summit....

The next stop was Winderlea (also in the Willamette Valley). The wine was good, but the ultra-modern tasting room and views were even better. The place looked like a Mac store....

We couldn't pass up visiting Argyle Winery. It's not everyday that you get to do a "champagne" tasting. There was a room at the winery filled with framed letters from the White House showing that the wines had been served to every president since the first Bush to Obama.



There's been a lot of buzz lately about the Portland food cart scene. Check out this map to see how many there are. We were so excited to try some of the more popular ones only to find out that like the wineries, a lot of the food carts are closed on Mondays. We ended up getting some very good spicy green papaya salad with grilled chicken and a crêpe....



Multnomah Falls (~30 miles east of Portland)....

The Vista House in Crown Point State Park. It offered great views of the Columbia River Gorge, especially with the cool clouds. Oh, and on the other side of the river, that's Washington State!




For dinner, we drove back to Portland for McMenamins Kennedy School. This place is an old elementary school converted into a hotel, restaurants, bars, movie theater, and live music venue. If you've been following the blog, you may remember my post titled "Table for One". What I didn't mention in that post was that I had driven to the Kennedy School two nights in a row, I walked inside, and both times I was too embarrassed to eat there alone. Instead, I drove back to the crappy hotel diner. Needless to say, I felt like I had some unfinished business. With Brooke and Ryan with me, I finally had my chance to eat at the Kennedy School....



Crossing into Washington! After dinner, we made the 175 mile drive back to Seattle!

WWWT

Tonight we tasted Pinot Noir. We also had a little bit of a South American theme going with the accompanying snacks. We had homemade eggplant empanadas provided by our host. Another wine-taster brought some delicious Quinoa with corn, green onions and goat cheese; a combination I never would have thought of, but I really enjoyed. The wines happened to be ranked in the order from most expensive to least expensive tonight, starting with the Walter Hansel 2005 Russian River Valley Pinot Noir, then the Chateau St. Jean 2006 Pinot Noir, then the Acacia 2006 Pinot Noir, and last, and this time I would certainly say least, the 2006 Red Truck "California" Pinot Noir.

Another WWWT

It is another installment of WWWT. This week we tasted Fume Blancs, which is actually just a made up term to make Sauvignon Blanc sound more appealing. Our host really stepped it up a notch this week and made Tofu Curry Bao. She made them from scratch and steamed them as we sat there with our mouths watering.
This week the winner was Ferrari Carano 2006 Sonoma County Fume Blanc, the second and third place was a tie between the Robert Mondavi Private Selection 2006 Fume Blanc and the Hogue Fume Blanc Columbia Valley 2006. The last place was not a Fume Blanc, it was the Barefoot Pinot Grigio. I guess there weren't enough Fume Blancs readily available to have a tasting of four wines. When you put Pinot Grigio next to anything else it tastes like water, so it never really had a chance.

WWWT

It was another Wild Wednesday Wine Tasting, although it was a week late because so many people were sick last week. This week we tasted Zinfandels. The first place wine this week was the Kendall-Jackson (2005), followed by the Ravenswood old vine Zinfandel (2005), then the Ravenswood Zinfandel (2006), and in last place was the Barefoot Zinfandel. We all agreed that unlike last time, we liked all of these wines.

Vintners' Festival

This past weekend was the Santa Barbara County Vinters' Festival. So we had some friends over for brunch with crepes and mimosas, and then headed up to wine country to take advantage of all the free food that accompanies wine tasting during the Vintners' festival.We had planned to start at Au Bon Climat and Qupe since they only open twice a year. We got there about an hour after they opened and it was so packed we could barely walk into the building. We decided to leave and come back later and hope it had cleared out a little. From there, we went to Cambria. The winery and the location was really beautiful, but we weren't very impressed with the wines. We then went back to ABC and luckily the crowd had cleared out quite a bit. Our favorite wine of the day was the 2005 Nielsen Vineyard Syrah from Qupe. Barrels at Au Bon Climat. Enjoying our food and wine and trying to stay warm (it was a very cold windy day).

WWWT

On every other Wednesday, we get together with some friends to watch Top Chef and taste some wines. This week we had four Chardonnays, tasted in order from left to right. After tallying everyone's score, the SB Winery came in first place followed by the Kendall Jackson, Point Conception, then lastly the Pouilly-Fuisse.

















For all those of you who are unfamiliar with screw caps....you don't need to use the foil cutter.























Everyone enjoyed the wine, some more than others. We don't call it Wild Wednesday Wine Tasting for nothin'.