whoa! A long, short summary of the HM!

Time flies and there is much to be updated on. First, our wedding and honeymoon…the wedding was wonderful and soon we’ll post a few pics but we were fortunate to be able to squeeze a short honeymoon in after our wedding and here are some images that captured the fun.
First, we made a nice drive in our rental car (thanks, Mike Sr.!) over to Portland with a dinner stop at (knowing the number of winery stops we would be making the following day and our mutual love for brews) High Horse Brewpub- great beer, so-so food. We found our hotel in downtown Portland, the Ace Hotel – very cool hotel, almost army barracks gone oh-so modern and hip. We pulled in late but nevertheless made a quick jaunt around the block and covered a percentage of the books at powell’s bookstore (ginormous!) and were asked at least 9 times in one hour for money. I’ve gotta say, the bums of Portland (can’t necessarily say ‘homeless’ as many actually have homes) are far more aggressive beggers than those in Seattle. Anyways, the following day Monday we started our trek towards McMinneville with our first winery stop at August Cellars, a host of a few other smaller wineries. The gentleman working the tasting room, we came to find out, is actually from Caldwell and was super friendly & informative.

We received one of the best winery tours I’ve been on by one of the owners/winemaker of August Cellars – they have built their facility based on gravity flow and here we are on the third level – notice that Mike is rockin’ his new Indian Creek Tee…(better get one before they sell out!)


Here we’re standing on their gravity-flow crush pad in front of their many acres of walnut trees.

Onto Yamhill Vineyards:

We stopped at a few more wineries in the McMinneville area but in order to make this BRIEF, I won’t go into too much detail. We decided to head on over to the coast…north of Newport:




After all of the winery stops (I was spitting…don’t worry!) and after the freezing wind of the Oregon coast, we decided to go warm ourselves up in Newport at Rogue!
Here is Mike trying to decide which Rogue brew to try on tap…decisions, decisions.

I was psyched to see they had my favorite on tap: I2PA

Back to our hotel: HOTEL OREGON! Crazy old renovated hotel that mcmenamins restored…

These paintings, creaky stairs that lead to a rooftop bar gives this hotel a very…creepy/exciting vibe:


Actually I’ve met quite a few farmers with that crazy *sparkle* in their eye like this guy:

And our room that was just as awesome as the Ace Hotel and Modern Hotel in Boise – just different!


The next day we prepped ourselves for more winery visits. Neither Mike nor I had our knocks socked off by any Pinots thus far in the trip and were wondering if we would stumble across a Pinot Noir that absolutely wowed us.
Here we are pulling into Maysara, and these are there steep hillside vineyard slopes. They had started crushing their Pinot Noir already (along with many other wineries in the area) as they knew the first big rain storm was headed their way in a few days.

Mike talking to the Tasting Room Manager while I was bonding with the vineyard dog MéMé. They had quite a lineup of wines to taste including several Pinots that were excellent.


Bonjour Jean! Ici est Bethel Heights boasting a very beautiful view of some steep vineyards.


And now my taste buds are starting to salivate and my eyes are lingering over to our stash of our FAVORITE pinots of the trip………AND I’ve got to say that when we pulled into the very oversized but empty parking lot and walked towards the brand spankin’ new facility, I was skeptical. It seemed to scream, “I’m just a beautiful venue”, pleading for attention with its fanciful entryway and art gallery…but I make so-so wine) No, Not true! Saint Innocent blew my socks off with all 4 of their Pinot Noirs, my favorite being the Zenith vineyard 2006. Rich and delicate in fruit, lovely berries with a pinch of earth, dirt and barnyard, which I love.

Well, on a personal note I have to say that in general I thought most of these pinots were very overpriced. It shows what a little hype can do for a market. I’m slightly torn about whose defense I am in – the wineries facing a number of uphill battles: mother nature and her devastations, the growing number of wineries, grape prices, barrel costs, the struggling economy and increasing transportation costs OR the defense of the consumer, because I am the consumer as well. If you’ve been supporting Indian Creek for quite some time now, you know that we’ve kept our prices fair and at the some of the best values you’ll come across. As a boutique winery we could raise our bottle prices if we wanted – the quality has consistently been great and we are always winning awards at the wine comps. It’s our choice to keep our wine prices low because we understand, as consumers ourselves, that great wine does not have to be $50 bones per pop. We’re not into ripping people off and we work hard to keep our wines at a reasonable price. Anyways, off my soap box and I just want to conclude that our wedding was wonderful, thank you to all who came and the honeymoon was a blast. Now, back to work…lots of grape stomping to do…stay tuned for some interesting weather reports.