OR Wine Trip Review/Photo's-Finally!

For our one year anniversary, John and I decided to head down to Oregon Wine Country and tour the gazillion wineries that the state has to offer. It was a week packed full of wine tasting, picnics, and relaxing time. The week started off with the 2 1/2 hour drive into Salem where we stopped at Willamette Valley Winery, which was about 1 mile from the house we rented. I knew that the first wedding anniversary traditionally is paper and had been racking my head to come up with something to give John. I finally decided on a wine journal so that he could write down where we went, what we tasted, what we liked and disliked, etc. I gave him the journal right before we had our first taste of wine at Willamette Valley. We took the grand tour there, which was great, and were even treated to some barrel samplings from the wine makers son (John absolutely loved this). We stayed at a little farmhouse in Salem that we found on www.vrbo.com. While we really liked the house, we would not choose that location again. If we were to go again (which we hope to sometime in the near future), we would stay in either Dundee, McMinville, Newberg, Dayton, or Carlton. Those cities are really close to each other and each have a ton of different wineries at them. We thought that area was really the heart of the Willamette Valley Wine area. If you haven't checked out www.vrbo.com before, do. Its a really great site for finding places to stay if you don't want to stay in a hotel. I know that in those cities, there are a number of bed and breakfast's as well. John is quite the savvy map guy and planner, so did a lot of research before we went on which wineries were know to have great pino's. He mapped everything out so that we knew where we were going (he even went as far as to print information off each wineries website, so we could read a little about them before we went). We were both thrilled with the places we chose to visit, and felt that we got excellent wine (we came home with 30 different bottles!) Here is a list of places that we went:

• Willamette Valley Vineyards
• Trinity Cristom Vineyards
• Witness Tree
• Le Cadeau
• Erath
• Solena Cellars
• 7 of Hearts
• Torii Mor
• Duck Pond
• Archery Summit
• Annie Amie
• Redhawk
• Bethel Heights
• Sokol Blosser
• Duponte
• St. Innocent
• Vista Hills
• Winters Hill
• Wine Works/Zivo
• Twelve
• Barking Frog
• Yamhill Vineyards
• Maysara
• Van Duzer

Here is a link to a great map of the area that shows all the wineries: http://www.winesnw.com/will.html. We used this everywhere we went and found it extremely helpful. Most of the wineries have a hard copy of this map as well, so you can ask at your first winery for one (they are free). This is also a great site that will show you hours and location of wineries: http://www.willamettewines.com/ (Some are appointment only, but not very many). Most should be open on the weekends.

We went to Duck Pond on our anniversary, and John had made reservations for a tour with them before hand. They knew it was our anniversary, and they went above and beyond for us. For $20, we got a tour of the winery, barrel tastings, a private table out on their terrace where someone waited on us and brought us a huge appetizer spread, brought tastings of wine right to our table, dessert, and they even sent us home with a complimentary bottle of wine. Their wine is good too, so definitely worth it.

Carlton is a small town that has a bunch of restaurants and wine tasting rooms there in the town. It was great to go and park our car and just walk around to the tasting rooms.

Before we left John had found an article somewhere online that listed out some of Oregon's best Pino Noir's (our favorite). We used this as a guide to choose which wineries we went to. La Cadeau winery is owned by a couple who spends half their time in Minnesota, and half their time at their vineyard in OR. John had contacted the owner before we left and to our surprise he was going to be in town while we were there. We made an appointment and got directions. As we were following the directions to the winery, we thought we were getting lost. There were so many windy, gravel roads that we felt were going to lead us to no where. Finally, we pulled up to a private residence and winery, with a breathtaking view. When we got there, 2 other couples were sitting out on the owners private patio of his house sipping on wine, and snacking on cheese and crackers. It was very intimate, just the 8 of us sitting around on the patio, talking about wine, and tasting some excellent pino's. After we tasted, the other couples left and it was just John and I and the owners. They walked us around their vineyards and talked to us about how they ended up owning a winery. It was such a great experience to be doing all of that with the actual winery owners, we felt quite special. An experience we are grateful for. We will be saving this bottle of wine for a very special occasion.

Our wedding had been videotaped by a friend and we had never watched the footage. I decided for our anniversary to hire a videographer to edit the footage and put it to music as a surprise to John. On our anniversary, I gave John his gift and we watched the footage of our wedding for the very first time. He loved it!

John made me a shadow box with a small journal inside so that we can write a little about each year of marriage as we celebrate them. It was very sweet and very thoughtful.

We had a wonderful time, learned a lot about wine and tried different kinds of wines we had never tasted before (i.e. Barbera, Ports, etc). It was the perfect vacation to celebrate one year of being married!