Willamette Valley Oregon 2023
We took a short but compact 4 day winery trip to Willamette Valley, Oregon. We planned on doing 10 wineries - ended up doing 9. The question was how do you select 10 from over 700 vineyards?? Well you ask friends, you research sites, you read blogs and also make a plan of picking wineries close to each other that make traveling between them easier.
We are including links below to make researching even easier for you! And check out our dining page to see all the great places we visited on the trip.
Our first goal was to determine where to stay and find an Airbnb. We decided to stay in McMinnville as it was central to many of the wineries, had a walkable downtown area, and also had lots of good places to eat. We like to get up and walk to a good breakfast and then at the end of the day, finish off at a good walkable restaurant. McMinnville presented all of this. We found an Airbnb called the August Moon Carriage House. It was a large 1 room place which was nice, clean, and was 2 short blocks from 3rd Street from where all the action was.
We had flown into Portland and retrieved our Turo Rental (which for those who do not know is like the Airbnb of rental cars.). We have used them several times with great success. Many people asked if we were going to get a driver for our tastings but we found with careful planning, our wineries were close together and we were very careful about not over drinking at our tastings. Many did not even allow having a glass of wine at the end as they did not have a food permit. We went more with the strategy of buying the bottles and shipping them back later.
Most of the wineries require reservations and are made through the Tok app on their websites. Even with us going on the off season and during the week, most still required reservations. We had planned 3 wineries a day, as most stated that a tasting would be 90 minutes or more. However we found they did not take that long, maybe because we were at the end of the season and during the week. At a few of the locations we were the only ones there which was very nice. Many times our tasters sat and talked with us about the area, and wines, and the history of the winery, which definitely made the experience more personal.
As everyone has their own particular preferences on wines, we do not feel qualified to say that one winery or another had the best wines. There were 2 that seemed to be our favorites - White Rose and Björnson. Maybe it was the atmosphere - White Rose in their intimate chalet, great views and a great presenter; Björnson with its views of Mt. Hood, the beautiful building and a great presenter as well. However we did not have a bad experience anywhere and we ended up buying wine from every location which we will be drinking for months and years from now.
One thing we would recommend is stopping by The Mail Room in Newburg and buying a box with wine separators. We ended up filling up 3, filled them after each winery and had them shipped to our house on the last day. We felt buying a few wines from everywhere will let us revisit them through the years and then perhaps join their wine club.
Below is a list of our wineries as well as some information about them. We also added a few pics.
Rex Hill Winery 30835 N Hwy 99W, Newberg, OR events@rexhill.com 10:00-5:00
No outside food/good food menu. Our first stop; nice tasting room with nice views
Domaine Drouhin 6750 NE Breyman Orchards Rd, Dayton, info@domainedrouhin.com.
No outside food/Cheese boards. Interesting family history going back to France
White Rose 6250 NE Hilltop Lane, Dayton OR 503-864-2328 tastingroom@whiteroeestate.com no food; Sits very high so beautiful views and intimate tasting room
Stoller Winery 16161 NE McDougall Rd, Dayton, OR503-864-3404; tradmins@stollerfamilyestate.com
10:30-5:30 Tasting fee waived with purchase of 2 bottles; Boards and sandwiches available. Unfortunately this was the 3rd winery of our day and although the wines were great and they have lots of food, we missed getting pictures of this nice winery.
Knudson 9419 NE Worden Hill Rd, Dundee, OR 503-580-1596 10:30-4:30;
tasting fee waived with 2-3 bottle purchase; Sits on one of the first vineyard roads and this red barn was one of the original buildings in the area.
Trisaetum 18401 NE Ribbon Ridge Rd, Newberg, OR 503-538-9898; info@trisaetum.com
Tasting Waived with $100 purchase; Boards available
Beaux Frères 15155 NE North Valley Road, Newberg, OR 503-537-1137
Tastings in the cellar room so chilly. Very relaxed vibe; Library room for tasting fun.
Cristom Winery 6905 Spring Valley Rd, NW, Salem, OR 503-375-3068; hospitality@cristomvineyards.com. 11:00-3:30 No food available; Lovely views of outside patio
Bjornson Vineyard 3635 Bethel Heights Road NW, Salem, OR 503-687-3016 Outside food okay; Beautiful views of Mount Hood and Mount Jefferson
Unfortunately we did not leave a lot of time for side trips this time, however we did go to Brigittine Monastery (which was kind of off the beaten path), where they sell homemade Truffles, Fudge and other delightful chocolates. They will ship them as well. I mean doesn’t wine and chocolate go well together??
Please be sure to check out our dining page as we have pics and great recommendations for places we ate on our visit. If you have any questions, please let us know and we will try to answer them as best we can.
This was a great trip and I’m sure we will be going back again sometime to try some more of the 700+ wineries.
