May. 24, 2012
On Thursday, May 24th at 6:30pm, Grüner Restaurant in Portland will be serving a four course tasting menu of seasonal Pacific Northwest Cuisine inspired by the wines of Adelsheim in their private Glacier Room. Courses will be paired with the following selections from Adelsheim:
2010 Pinot Blanc, Bryan Creek Vineyard
2009 Elizabeth's Reserve Pinot Noir
2009 Bryan Creek Vineyard Pinot Noir
2010 Deglace Pinot Noir
The cost is $100 per person. Please respond quickly, as seating is limited for this very special evening. For reservations or more information, please call Greg Cantu or General Manager Damien Baker at 503-241-7163, or email greg@grunerpdx.com. We look forward to seeing you!
May. 26, 2012
May 26th and 27th: Memorial weekend
11:00 am - 4:00 pm
Featuring our 2011 Rosé, 2010 Chardonnay, 2009 Elizabeth's Reserve Pinot noir, 2009 Temperance Hill Vineyard Pinot noir, and 2009 Boulder Bluff Vineyard Pinot noir.
$20 tasting fee includes artisan cheeses and a Riedel Oregon Pinot glass
Complimentary admission for Club members and two guests
Adelsheim Vineyard is one of several Willamette Valley wineries participating in the EcoTrust Farm to School Program over Memorial Weekend. These programs work to bring more locally-grown, healthy products to the school lunchroom, educate children about agriculture and support regional farmers.
Jun. 02, 2012
Menlo Park, California
Saturday, June 2, 2012
2:00 pm Oregon Chardonnay: The clear alternative
Wine Seminars Registration required. Cost per seminar: $15/person. Wine Seminars have limited seating and are available on a first-come, first-served basis. Sign-ups will be taken on-site.
For more information about the Sunset Magazine Celebration Weekend, please visit their website.
May. 17, 2012
Spring 2012 issue
by Anthony Dias Blue
When David Lett decided to make Pinot noir in the Willamette Valley in 1965, he was venturing into uncharted waters. A graduate of the University of California at Davis, the incubator for California winemakers, he decided that Oregon's cool inland valley was a better place to produce Pinot than anywhere in the Golden State. "I had to spend a few years un-learning everything I learned at Davis," he told me some years ago.
His daring experiment led directly to the creation of one of the world's most celebrated growing areas. Pinot noir is notoriously finicky about where it grows, and Oregon's Willamette Valley has established itself as a worthy rival to Pinot's home turf in Burgundy.
In 2008, Oregon produced a classic vintage. Many of the wines require more time to reach their full potential. As if to make us happy while we wait for the 2008s to mature, we were given the 2009 vintage - a more precocious and generous vintage. Tasting through these wines is one of those transcendent experiences that makes a wine writer feel extremely fortunate.
Oregon has achieved its potential, and David Lett, in that big vineyard in the sky, must be very proud. Picking the best among a dazzling array of great wineries is a daunting task. I'm sure I could create a list of 11 other producers that would be just as valid. But, anyway, here is my list of favorites, based on a tasting of 2009 and a few 2008 wines.
ADELSHEIM
Founded in 1971, Adelsheim Vineyard is driven by a love for winemaking and a dedication to Oregon's unique terroir. Co-founder and original winemaker David Adelsheim served as the first chairperson of the Oregon Wine Board and as president of the Oregon Winegrowers Association, bringing his seasoned perspective and extensive knowledge of the land to his namesake winery. Today, Adelsheim lays claim to 11 exceptional vineyard sites in the Willamette Valley totaling 190 acres, and it continues to thrive on the zeal and terroir dedication on which the winery was founded. The 2009 Bryan Creek is fresh and stylish, with juicy raspberry and cherry, while the 2009 Estate Pinot is bright and tangy with lively acidity.
Click here to visit the SIP Northwest website.
May. 06, 2012
By Kristi Turnquist, The Oregonian
In the beginning, the late 1960s and early 1970s, they were bearded young men and overall-wearing women. They were college graduates who had majored in engineering, philosophy, political science or the liberal arts. But they found their life’s work in the hills and farmlands of the Willamette Valley.
The new “Oregon Experience” documentary, “Oregon Wine: Grapes of Place,” tells the story of how the state’s pioneering winemakers were driven to produce wines when there was not yet a market for them. They shared a vision, which was to produce wines in the noblest European tradition, but bearing the specific traits of the Willamette Valley regions where the grapes were grown.
This marriage of old and new worlds was revolutionary. In time, the efforts of the early visionaries and risk-takers made Oregon synonymous with world-class pinot noir, the hard-to-grow grape for which the northern Willamette Valley climate turned out to be ideal.
In “Oregon Wine: Grapes of Place,” producer/writer Nadine Jelsing interviews the founders of the wineries — their hair now gray, or gone — who helped put the Willamette Valley on the wine map: Eyrie, Adelsheim, Sokol Blosser, Erath, Ponzi, among them. She includes taped interviews with David Lett, founder of the Eyrie Vineyards, who died in 2008, and whose passion for pinot noir earned him the nickname, “Papa Pinot.”
Jelsing reminds us that these trailblazers weren’t the first to make wine in Oregon. Peter Britt, the photographer and horticulturist, grew wine grapes in the Rogue Valley in the 1850s. But Prohibition wiped out the wine industry, such as it was. As David Adelsheim says, because of Prohibition, “we’d lost a generation of wine drinkers.”
For years, California was the center of commercial production. Its industry was known for producing jug wines that borrowed names from great wines of Europe —
“Hearty Burgundy,” and chablis — but didn’t observe the classic European standards of winemaking.
The California approach, as those interviewed in the documentary recall, was to plant every kind of grape everywhere. But that was absolutely the wrong way to grow pinot noir, which fared poorly in the hot California sun.
All of the interviewees recall how much of their ultimate success came from working collaboratively and congenially. The early winemakers shared resources and the same goal — to make the best wines possible, without compromise. And while the wines were good, at first nobody wanted to buy them. Who cared about wine from Oregon?
But when Oregon wines began winning national taste tests, influential critics jumped on the bandwagon. By the mid-1980s, word was getting out about Oregon’s wine — especially the pinot noir.
As the documentary says, there are now about 400 wineries in Oregon, and the state ranks fourth in the country in wine production. What began as a handful of dreamers planting grapes grew into an industry.
