At the risk of pointing out a website that is better than ours, we’d like to direct your attention to the new design just launched by Carlton-based Northwest Wines to You, which is a kind of clearinghouse for boutique wineries, most of which are in the Willamette Valley and fly just under the radar of the bigger and better-known wineries of the area.
They store, market and ship wine for about two dozen wineries, including Isabelle Dutartre’s 1789 Wines; our friends at Biggi0-Hamina Cellars and Winter’s Hill Vineyard, and Kelley Fox Wines. Rebecca Marie Pittock Shouldis, who runs the business, also makes the wine for Ghost Hill Cellars, another label that you can buy directly off the site and is a real sleeper of a wine.
Try their sample packs if you want to experience some little-known wines that you’ll rarely find in your store or bottle shop.
Harry Peterson-Nedry, photographed on Memorial Day weekend, 2011
There is something awfully pleasant about bringing your glass jug to a winery, knocking on the door, and having the owner of the winery — in this case, Harry Peterson-Nedry of Chehalem — greet you and fill your bottle with crisp, fresh wine, straight from the barrel.
This is the crux of the experience behind Harry/Chehalem’s new refillable, wine-on-tap program. (Which we think just screams out for a catchy name; to that end, we recently ran a Facebook promotion where readers named the program. The winners were Re-Wined and ReBott, and we’ll take our royalties in wine, thank you).
The green benefits of refillable bottles are obvious: Less glass goes into the recycler, less glass gets purchased and transported by the winery, and the bottles are capped, not corked. And since Harry doesn’t have to bottle, label and ship the wine, it’s more affordable: In this case, $15 for a liter of good INOX Chardonnay (a $23 value), and $25 for a liter of ’09 3 Vineyard Pinot Noir (a $36 value). Bottles are $5 each, and can be filled over and over.
But there is something deeper and more satisfying about this program than simply buying wine in a new package. As Harry said, and as we’ve experienced, a refillable bottle of wine makes drinking wine more routine…”more playful and part of your meal,” as he put it. Stopping off to fill bottles at Chehalem to or from work makes the wine purchase (and consumption) as normal as picking up bread and eggs. He’s hoping to capitalize on the winery’s location on the busy 99W corridor to capture commuter traffic. (Two other Oregon wineries that we know of, Troon Vineyards in the Applegate Valley and Springhouse Cellar in Hood River, also have refillable bottle programs.) The capped bottles should be opened within a week and drunk within a day or two after that. For some reason, we’ve found that they’re just easier to pull out and put on the dinner table, with none of the usual “should we choose and open a new bottle of wine?” negotiations that we usually undertake. And having a whole liter of wine handy seems to make the juice go further.
On top of it all, the wines are delicious, and a good value. Harry is presently pouring the 2010 INOX Chardonnay, which won’t be released in normal bottles at the winery until September, and has a crisp, clean, lively feeling on the palette; and his 3 Vineyard Pinot Noir, which opens up into a nice red table wine if we can just leave it alone long enough to warm to room temperature.
When we picked up our bottles at the winery, Harry said, “Enjoy them, and, why, bring ‘em back and we’ll fill ‘em up again.” Which honestly, we’re prepared to do again and again.
EDITOR’S NOTE: As of this writing in June 2011, Harry’s bottles can only be refilled at the winery, on Veritas Lane (just off 99W) outside of Newburg, and not at the Chehalem tasting room in the middle of town. They’re awaiting clearance from the wine distribution powers before the tasting room can also be a filling station, and hope to have it by the middle of the summer.
It’s hard to not rave about the International Pinot Noir Celebration, which happens at the end of July every year in McMinnville on the campus of stately Linfield College, and attracts people from all over the world to spend three days drinking an astonishing amount of the best Pinot Noir in the world (not only from Oregon, but from French, Californian and New Zealand wineries as well) and eating an astounding amount of food prepared by some of Oregon’s best chefs. Jancis Robinson calls it “One of the most enjoyable wine weekends in the world.”
The only knocks one might land on the event are that 1) it’s for people of means, with an upwards of $1,000 price tag for the entire weekend, with lots more spent on travel, lavish pre-IPNC dinners and wine purchases; and 2) it sells out fast, including this year. If you’re lucky, you can snag a late ticket to the Sunday afternoon Passport to Pinot event, when most of the full-price participants have staggered off to home to sleep off the excesses of the weekend.
It was with a great deal of anticipation, then, that we participated in one of the first events leading up to the IPNC season, a Walkabout tour of three Portland establishments that hosted 15 IPNC wineries, all from Oregon, for tastings paired with small-bite foods. Arranged by event organizer Whitney Schubert (pictured here) it promised to deliver a tantalizing preview of what it’s like to attend the full enchildada in July. And didn’t disappoint.
Arriving at Noble Rot, for example, we quickly discovered the star power that IPNC almost casually delivers. Jason Lett, whose father David practically created the Oregon wine industry in the mid-’70s, was there pouring his Eyrie Vineyards pinots, right down the aisle from Luisa Ponzi, whose parents were a step behind the Letts. Maria Stuart and Rebekah Bellingham of the R. Stuart & Co. winery were also there, pouring their delicious Temperance Hill pinot paired with little wedges of a sweet onion tart.
A few blocks away, at Simpatica, the food was even more sensational: Lamb arancini risotto balls paired alongside Stoller Vineyards delightful SV Dundee Hills pinot, and Bill Hatcher of Rex Hill (who delightedly showed off his new business cards announcing himself as “the industry Antichrist”) pouring his own reserve wine with platters of duck confit tarts. An embarrassing feeling of fullness and satiation was reached before I even made it to the third venue, Beaker & Flask, only to dive into more wine, food and conversations with Anna Matzinger, the winemaker at Archery Summit, and Myron Redford, another industry pioneer from Amity Vineyards.
That’s a star power that few events can match, and in July, the above-mentioned winemakers are joined by people like Veronique Drouhin-Boss and Dominique Lafon from Burgundy, among many others. Suffice it to say that we’re now saving up for next year’s IPNC, if only to see (for the sake of science) what our limits might be for such extravagant food, wine and company.
A railroad depot that has been turned into a tasting room? A charming, small-town Main Street that is lined with one tasting room after another? Fine dining, casual living and some of the best rural scenery in Oregon? No, this isn’t heaven…it’s Carlton. Click here to read how we spent three almost-perfect days in this Willamette Valley wine mecca.
How does a self-described Burgundy geek manage to find and import dozens of exquisite French wines, make some of the best Pinot Noirs in Oregon, and STILL find time to run and watch every football game that Arsenal and Barcelona play? Meet Scott Wright of Scott Paul Wines…read his story
For many years, OregonWines.com has been a great resource for travel, tourism, events and hospitality news about the Oregon wine industry. For many years, our tens of thousands of devoted fans have come to this website to plan their trips, learn about wine events, and connect with the more than 400 great wineries across the State. With all of the great things we had going, the one thing we always wanted to give you more of was content. Good, original, engaging content.
Enter Jim Gullo. A respected wine and travel writer who is also Editor of OregonWine.com, Jim has a way with words. If you’ve ever read his interviews and articles you will appreciate his approach to telling a story the way it was meant to be told. His down to earth style, personable perspective, and engaging manner bring light to any topic he wants you to know about. What’s more, he lives in the heart of Oregon’s wine country and has been published in dozens of wine and travel magazines.
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How could it be that Erin Stephenson and her new Third Street Flats – which are four apartments, available for nightly or weekly rental s on the top floor of the 1885 McMinnville Bank Building – have anticipated my every lodging mood? Erin and her husband, Travis Easterday, have created the most original and eclectic lodging in McMinnville – if not in all of Oregon – by having four different local teams design four unique and utterly different units.
Erin says that they were trying to recreate the feel of the pensiones that they visit in Europe, where you rent an apartment in the heart of a city or town. But I know better. They obviously did it by reading my mind, and I wish they’d cut it out.
Example: I often like to pretend that I’m Ernest Hemingway, swanning around 1920’s Paris and enjoying a gay café society that revolves around a chic little pied-a-terre apartment of my very own. NOBODY KNOWS THIS! (until now). And yet, Flat Number One at Third Street is named the Pied-a-Terre, and is a gorgeous little boite of brown velour furniture, a kitchenette, watercolors on the walls from local artists and a chandelier hanging from an upholstered chain. Formidable!
“The girls from La Bella Casa knocked it out of the park [when they did the design],” says Erin. No, they merely read my mind. Like Hemingway himself, I could write some gripping prose from that unit, believe you me, but only after getting through a bottle or two of the Third Street Flats wine that is offered to guests alongside a plate of Honest Chocolates. And maybe a late visit to the bar at La Rambla, downstairs.
But wait, on other days I dream of having a big, Italian farmhouse, with a large kitchen and table from which to scarf great volumes of pasta with sundry friends and family. Which brings us to Flat #2, named Olio e Aceto (which either means Oil & Vinegar or is the full name of Popeye’s girlfriend, I’m not sure which). This Italianate gem has a full kitchen with a beautiful, farmhouse table and bench made from recycled wood, a cutting board reclaimed from a massive stump, Kim Hamblin’s paper art on the walls and shelves stocked with pasta, flour, sugar and bottles of the namesake olive oil and vinegar. And a colander, of course, for draining all of that pasta. When Sophia Loren comes to town, this is where she would stay.
But then, every couple of weeks I need to feel like a Portland hipster, so I’d stay at The Pearl (Flat #3), with its bright blue and green walls, low-rise king bed and Asian accents. I would do very cool and hip things there. How did Erin know this? I thought I kept it to myself.
And finally, The Retreat is a big, expansive urban apartment with red-brick walls, tall windows looking out onto Third Street and oversized photographs from Sandi Colvin (who also runs the Hidden Treasures gallery) of Farmer’s Market produce and Third Street scenes. When my options vest, when my personal Board needs to convene, when the tassels on my loafers need a break, I would retreat to The Retreat.
With such lodgings available, who needs therapy? (I’ll leave that to you to decide.) Third Street Flats rent for $165-$245/night, with discounts for weekly stays; make reservations on-line or call 503-857-6248.
At the risk of pointing out a website that is better than ours, we’d like to direct your attention to the new design just launched by Carlton-based Northwest Wines to You, which is a kind of clearinghouse for boutique wineries, most of which are in the Willamette Valley and fly just under the radar of the bigger and better-known wineries of the area.
