Thanksgiving weekend is a fantastic time to go wine tasting if you don't mind the crowds, the traffic, and the overpriced tasting fees. It also helps if you have a designated driver (i.e., anyone who can hold his/her liquor better than I). Darr and I met our friends, Ann and Raymond, for a day of tasting the local grape juice. Let me begin by saying it was farctic* up there in the Dundee hills and down in the cellar was no tropical paradise either. Even with the wine drinking, which you would assume would heat you up a little, Raymond still had to go back to the car for his jacket (the rest of us were already donning ours). We started our wine adventure at Sokol Blosser, one of my favorites because it produces a great pinot noir and the ice wine I so love to consume. Ann and Raymond mentioned stopping off beforehand to get some food in their stomachs in preparation for the drinking but Darr and I had skipped breakfast. Luckily there was an assortment of Kettle chips, breads, pretzels dipped in chocolate sauce, etc. to keep the alcohol from traveling directly into our bloodstream. A mere hour and a half after our arrival, Darr and I signed up to become club members, a move which saved us 20% off the wine we purchased and reimbursed us for the cost of our tasting fee ($35). Two things that may prevent us from returning to Sokol Blosser - the extremely high tasting fee and the punch-card system. Yes, you choose and pay for one of three tasting options. Each option has its own tasting punch-card. Get some wine in your glass and your card is punched. No more wine for you. (Think Seinfeld and the soup kitchen guy.)
Our next stop, Chehalem. On one of our El Gaucho nights we had a fabulous pinot from Chehalem so when it came time to review the nearby wineries to figure out where to go, this place easily made the list. Much more reasonably priced, we only had to pay a $10 tasting fee to get in. We didn't get to keep the glass but that's okay because we didn't want to anyway. The one oddity at Chehalem I couldn't quite reconcile, the first wine-pouring guy we encountered on our way in was dressed up like a wizard. Halloween was last month, sir. It's Thanksgiving. I mean, if anything the dude should have been dressed like a turkey, eh? A quick lunch at Ixtapa in Newberg and we were ready to go forth and drink.
Our wine excursion ended at August Cellars. We had planned on a fourth stop but as one of the two designated drivers (a.k.a. husbands) cut himself off from further drinking we figured it was time to head home. But not before we whipped through that place and drank from four or five different wineries - Et Fille (French for "and daughter", I highly recommended their Willamette pinot), Barking Frog (they have a very interesting dessert wine, I described it as Kool-Aid on crack, not that I've had crack but that seems an apt description for this wine), August Cellars (had a very tasty Gewurtraminer and something called Maréchal Foch that was fantastic when paired with the cinnamon chocolate truffles from Majestic Chocolates), and Toluca Lane (at this point I don't remember what any of the wine from this producer tasted like).
It was a good day for us. We drank some good wine, hung out with friends, and managed to get some Christmas shopping done. Oh, and it didn't rain - woohoo!
*fucking arctic, a.k.a. damn cold
1 comment:
Sorry we missed it! We were going to call to find out if you were still planning on heading out but the entire family was sick.
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