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| The gang wine tasting |
To celebrate Kim's 50th birthday, we spent five days in Willamette Valley in Oregon (we had been there in July to celebrate our anniversary). We were joined by Kim's sister, Kerry and her husband Stuart as well as Kim's friends Mark and Tracy. Tom had rented a VRBO which was a beautiful farm house on a hill overlooking a vineyard. We ended up in the garage that has been transformed into a game room and had a pull out sofa - the joke was that we won since our room was the biggest!
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| Rental house and view from deck |
We flew in on Saturday, landing around noon. We couldn't check into the house until 4pm and the others were arriving around that time so we decided to go to a few wineries which sounded good at the time but then was not so good later in the evening after having too much wine! We tried two wineries that a colleague of Keith's had recommended - Ponzi (which has a nice modern tasting room and some nice wines that we really enjoyed) and Dusky Goose (which we did not enjoy as much). We ended up buying his colleage a bottle from Ponzi to send to her. We then capped off the day at Penner Ash (our favorite winery there) where Mark and Tracy joined us for a tasting and then we had a bottle of wine sitting out on the Adirondack chairs.
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| Dusky Goose Winery |
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| Ponzi Winery |
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| Penner Ash Winery |
We then checked into the house and had an amazing dinner at the house - Tom had arranged for a private chef who made us a five course meal which was delicious. Mark had bought the wine for dinner so after a day of wine tasting and an evening of more wine, we had our fill! Keith couldn't even make it passed the second course - he was so tired that he retired early.
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| Dinner from private chef |
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| So good she licked the plate clean! |
On Sunday, we took a van (Tom had arranged for a driver) and did tastings at three wineries - Argyle (where we liked their dessert wine and ordered a few bottles), Domaine Serene (a large winery with a more traditional tasting room and beautiful views - some of the pinots were nice), and Stoller (which has a large modern tasting room with a nice lawn - wines were pretty good but our waitress was terrible). That evening we had dinner at Park and Main in Carlton where we shared a pizza which was quite good.
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| Argyle Winery |
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| Domaine Serene Winery |
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| Stoller Winery |
On Monday, the rest of the crew went for hike while Keith and Shawna worked from the house. Late afternoon, we met them at McMenamins, a rooftop bar in McMinnville. We had several drinks and bar food - burgers and tots. It was Kerry's birthday so we had a mini celebration with Stuart buying an ice cream sandwich with candles - the candles took almost an hour to hunt down!
On Tuesday, we worked for a couple of hours in the morning and then went for a hike in Silver Falls State Park where we saw some beautiful waterfalls. We then went for another wine tasting at Cristom (a smaller winery near Salem) where we really enjoyed all of the wines and the woman did a really nice job explaining each. We went back to the house for a quick shower and then had dinner at Pura Vida in McMinnville - a small Mexican restaurant with yummy traditional dishes.
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| Silver Falls State Park |
On Wednesday, the rest of the crew drove out to the coast where they planned on staying for two nights. Keith and Shawna worked from the house and then headed to the airport to fly to NYC where we would stay for a few days so that we could go to the Feinberg bat mitzvah.
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