Sidetripping Sideways

One can day trip from Portland in any direction - my perennial favorites are to the west and the east (more on those to come). Most recently, however, we sidetripped sideways, an hour southwest of town, to the Willamette Valley wine country.

Oregon is no Napa; there are no fake chateaus here, or $400-a-plate restaurants. But we still have three critical assets: rolling vistas of vineyards and farmland; enough foot traffic for wineries to invest in pretty tasting rooms with regular hours; and decent wines (sorry, Virginia - it wasn't meant to be).

Putting a spring into my step:
my very first 10K.

Now, truth be told, we decided to spend the day in McMinnville - the population epicenter of Oregon's still-growing wine region - for entirely non-wine related reasons. I had found a small 10K race organized by a local school and decided it was time to cross item 16 off my list of life goals ("16. Run a 10K"). And we had a lovely gift certificate to a McMinnville restaurant only open for dinner. We figured we could fill the interim seven hours with the wine-related stuff.

The wine-related stuff

A friend once described her mixed feelings for New Orleans by explaining that it's where the South goes to get ugly. I sometimes feel that way about the wine region around McMinnville: at our first stop last Saturday, when it was just barely noon, we shared the tasting room with two bachelorette parties and a birthday party. An hour later, driving the winding country roads between vineyards, we passed a white stretch Hummer limousine that looked as out of place as rhinestones on a nun's wimple. 

Here's my understanding: if you are serious about wine (which we, frankly, are not), you would limit yourself to two, maybe three tastings in a day - at which point, your palette is spent. You should only need a few sips of each wine to evaluate it, and you likely want to spit out most of those sips so the alcohol doesn't fuzzy your senses. But that's not what people do, so it's no longer what the industry expects.

People go wine-tasting to get drunk. Tasting rooms thus charge, on average, $10 for a flight of one-ounce pours (which is a fair value, if you're actually drinking the wine). There is an expectation that you might visit half-a-dozen wineries in an afternoon. Indeed, small towns like Dundee and Carlton consist almost entirely of winery tasting rooms, so you could sample a dozen different wineries on foot in the course of a couple hours. Like a wine crawl. This is not my scene.

So why am I here? Like I said before, the countryside, the above-average wine - and the people-watching.

I don't know if it's just because this is my native habitat - like it stirs the deepest chords of my childhood nostalgia or something - but I find the lush countryside of the Willamette Valley to be exquisitely beautiful. Orderly vineyards wrap over hillsides; fields of spring green and gold spread over the valley; red barns and stands of dark evergreens frame pastoral vignettes; and the horizon is defined by the purple shades of distant hills (what in other parts of the country would be considered mountains). 

On the patio of Anne Amie.

Knowing that our vineyard-visiting stamina would be limited, I picked our first stop for the view. Anne Amie Vineyards' best feature is its broad patio overlooking the valley with ample tables for picnicking. This is where we ran into the various groups of 20-somethings on the party circuit. Which brings me to my second sociological point.

There is a social hierarchy among vineyards. I can think of at least three types in Oregon:

• The slightly flashy yet approachable vineyard, often with dramatic views, that caters to late-20-something suburbanites eager to start their "collection" (example: Anne Amie)
• The purposefully understated yet upscale vineyard with an established name where middle-aged patrons can demonstrate their discretionary spending power (example: Domaine Drouhin) 
• The boutique winery with a small tasting room, favored by slightly crunchy Portland professionals grateful for the opportunity to demonstrate that they really do know it all (example: Lemelson)

Of course this is my personal ordering, colored by the fact that of these three groups, we most closely identify with the slightly crunchy Portland professional know-it-alls. So it is not surprising that we liked our second winery - Lemelson - much better.

Lemelson's view: gentler, more bucolic.

Lemelson is your prototypical boutique Oregon winery: The vineyards are organic; the building energy-efficient and environmentally friendly. Everything is made of local wood and designed to have that NW-style subtle profile. I ate it up.

It doesn't have the sweeping panorama of Anne Amie, but Lemelson maximizes the curves of its own vineyards in framing the views from its tasting room and patio. And while I am NOT (repeat, NOT) a wine person, I vastly preferred Lemelson's wine to Anne Amie's.

Even sharing a single flight at Anne Amie and Lemelson, Jeff and I were done after two stops. Like I said, we do not pretend to be wine experts. In the end, our vineyard hopping only used up a couple of our in-between hours. So what else is there to do in the McMinnville area? Eat.

The food-related stuff

I divide my time when traveling into two categories: eating, and filling the time between eating and when I can justify eating again. After leaving the house at 7 a.m. on a Saturday morning, running 6+ miles, and accomplishing a major life goal, there was no question what I was going to do next.

Community Plate is like a slice of Portland in McMinnville, complete with loft-like space, tables made out of reclaimed wood, and a self-service bussing station. But one piece of Portland was blessedly missing: The Wait. Brunch in Portland is a full-contact sport, usually involving multi-hour waits for mediocre food. In McMinnville, life is more laid back, and one may linger over breakfast. 

Which is particularly lovely when your breakfast is orgasmic. Boy howdy, my leek-and-trumpet-mushroom quiche: after each bite, I was like, "it can't really be that good." Then I'd take another bite and think, "holy shit. it's really that gooooooood." Offer me a quiche, and I expect something dry, bland, and forgettable. Not this quiche. This was like the fluffiest omelet, gently cooked so you could still taste the eggs and with a hint (not a sledgehammer) of cheese to help it all melt away gently on your tongue - what the food industry likes to call a good "mouth feel." Jeff's chickpea-falafel burger was pretty awesome, too.

Even the font is Portland hipster-esque.

Teatime found us in Carlton, a two-block town that has been taken over entirely by winery tasting rooms. Walking down the street: winery, winery, winery, artisanal bake shop, winery, wine-themed restaurant, winery, winery, etc.

Just off the two-block strip sits Carlton Bakery, where Tim the baker makes all the breads and sweets fresh each morning before sunrise. We settled onto stools with big mugs of Stumptown coffee and a crumbly chocolate-walnut scone (you could taste the butter, and it tasted good) to enjoy some afternoon quiet time as a slow trickle of locals came and went. Teatime is such a civilized tradition.

Carlton Bakery, after the lunch time rush.

Back in McMinnville, the sun was out and the trees were leaf-ing: perfect weather for strolling. But as sweet as McMinnville's Third Street is, there's just not much there, and we found ourselves needing edible entertainment again at a distressingly early hour. Luckily, La Rambla opens its doors at 4 for happy hour along its broad and comfortable copper bar. Spanish tapas, well-executed; Oregon and Spanish wines by the glass; friendly bartenders - a gentle end to a day in wine country. Just don't order the lamb nachos.

Bottom line

Downtown McMinnville: Cute but not overly stimulating.

I like McMinnville as a stop on the way to or from the Oregon coast - spending a whole day was a bit slow for us young people. But if you are really serious about wine, check into the Hotel Oregon - right smack in the middle of McMinnville's Third Street - and spend a couple of days exploring the countryside. Just bring some good books to fill the quiet hours, unless your stamina for wine tasting vastly exceeds my own.

Also helpful: The Oregonian's summaries of McMinnville restaurants (here and here); The Oregonian's lists of wineries with views (here and here); more complete lists of Willamette Valley wineries; and reviews of Willamette Valley wineries by someone who clearly knows more about wine than I do.