Visiting Oregon………

A trip to Oregon for any wine lover should most definitely include a spot of time in the Willamette Valley. 50 miles from the Pacific Coast, it’s easy to combine the best of both.

We just purchased a new car and wanted to try it out on a road trip. Because of our location in Sonoma, fires were pretty much preventing us from traveling south or east. North along the coast was our safest route to take.

For most of week we traveled 101 through the redwoods, hit a huge number of scenic overlooks, walked a dozen beaches, saw a couple of whales, and a huge number of elks.

The Oregon fires were staying well east enabling us to head into the Willamette Valley for wine tasting over our last road trip days.

The Willamette Wine region has 11 AVAs and over 700 wineries so, yeah, it’s difficult to make a selection to visit. We had three tasting appointments set up at Alexana, Colene Clemens, and Patricia Green Cellars. All are located around the town of Newberg making it relatively easy to fit 3 leisurely tastings into one day.

Alexana has a stunning tasting room, and some excellent wines of course. They produce around 18,000 cases each year. The winery is just one of the trio of estate wineries owned by Dr. Revana. The two others are Revana Estate in Napa, CA and Corazon Del Sol in Mendoza, Argentina.

Ean Jessee welcomed us with a glass of the Alexana Pinot Gris, gave us a short tour of vineyard clones and led us through the tasting menu. Along with the wines on the tasting menu we tried the 2021 Corazon Del Sol Malbec.

The 2022 Alexana ‘Signature’ Pinot Noir was a favorite and especially for me, the 2024 Alexana ‘Fenwood Vineyard’ was amazing. Maybe because it was still morning the nose had a distinct coffee aroma for me.

A side note – While tasting we kept hearing canon explosions from the neighboring winery. Apparently it is one way to keep the critters out of the vineyards. Alexana however prefers to use recorded bird noises to frighten away pests. Seems a much nicer means of combat.

We visited Colene Clemens in 2014 and truly enjoyed both the visit and their wines. This return visit was nothing less.

Leah Addington was our host filling us in on all that had been going on at the winery along with winemaker, Stephen Goff & Bella the dog. The 2022 Pinots we tasted with her were wonderful. The 2022 Margot was a favorite.

Back in 2014 we purchased the 2011 Margo Pinot Noir. Leah brought out a bottle of it so we might taste it again. So lovely! We could not miss taking several bottles of it home.

Patricia Green Cellars was our last tasting of the day. Aubry Bumpus who facilitates the wineries direct sales was our host pouring us six Pinot Noirs. They make more than 25 Pinots from their estate fruit and select vineyards throughout the Willamette Valley. I believe that number is more than any other winery in the valley produces. And yes, they also create some fine Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonay and a whiskey that was born out of the disastrous fire year of 2020.