If I was to be in this wine area for a day, where do I want to visit? I won’t have time for appointments so skip that piece. Just want to know 2-3 places where I would best put my time and palate to use as a visitor.
Thanks in advance.
Hey Frank. As I mentioned earlier I have not been impressed with the wines from this area. Maybe I just got unlucky and didn’t hit any good wineries the day I passed through. I did a quick search on CT of wines from the AVA and sorted by score. Seems like Reustle comes up a lot and they appear to be open to the public w/o needing an appointment. .
Abacela is the only Umpqua Valley winery I’ve visited, and they are worthwhile for their wines from grapes not usually associated with Oregon- Albarino, Dolcetto, Graciano, Tannat, Tempranillo. Nice tasting room with helpful and knowledgeable staff.
I’ve had wines from at least a half dozen of the other wineries in the area, and was not impressed with any, but all were at least pleasant.
P Hickner
Recommend Abacela as Peter says, and Brandborg (in Elkton) although you must enjoy very AFWE wines to enjoy Brandborg. Girardet if you want a very unusual producer who people tend to really like or dislike.
Haven’t been to any others in a number of years. Henry Estate if you are very interested in trellising (invented the Scott Henry trellis system).
Forget the wine country. Head up the North Umpqua river and have dinner at the Steamboat Inn. If you fly fish, bring your rod.
- on that, but don’t stop there. Hike up a few of the waterfalls, and then keep on the road to Crater Lake.
P Hickner
Guys, I won’t have the ability to get away and do non-wine things but I do appreciate the 2 suggestions for visits. Thank you very much.
+1 on Brandborg.
If you are further south in the Applegate Valley near Medford, Cowhorn.
Come a bit W and we will pull corks.
+1 Abacela and Brandborg.
Near Ashland is Irvine & Roberts and while I have not had the wine I do know some of the folks behind the project. Should be good.
Michael @ StoryTeller was starting to sell wines from SoOR and said some good winemakers were starting to work down there.
So, wanted to follow back up and post a few brief impressions about our day in the Umpqua Valley this past Sunday. My parents and I hopped in the car and left Bandon in the late morning, making the 90 min drive through the forest and hills to get to the southern section of the Umpqua. We then spent the day hitting wineries, a total of 6. This represents about 1/4th of what is in the area, which can be thought of as a northern, central and southern section, with wineries kind of clustering in each of these 3 portions. For context, we did several in the south and a few in the central before it became 5PM and we ran out of time, heading back to Bandon and the fog of the coast.
The valley is warm, and while it is not far from the Oregon coast straight line to the west, the valley does sit in the ‘interior’, mainly fed from I-5 that runs north and south through it. Here is a map that gives you a view as to the wineries and the layout.
http://www.umpquavalleywineries.org/wine-tour-map/
For some broad impressions, I took away the following (again based on a visit of 6 wineries, and bringing with me a seasoned, fragile palate from California).
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Heat. The valley is warm, and late afternoon was mid-90s as we worked our way into our last stop. This heat I am sure dictates what can be grown.
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Varietals. Really all over the spectrum. Merlot, Cab, Dolcetto, Barbera, Tempranillo, Chard, Reisling. I found a little Pinot, but it didn’t suit me.
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Hospitality/Winery Culture. Probably a crappy way to title this point so my meaning is what do the wineries look like. Big variation here, from the very modest and shack-like, clear up through the more modern and polished that one would find along Hwy 12 or 29 in Nor Cal. And from what I tasted, the expense or simplicity of winery aesthetic did not correlate to quality.
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Complexity and Acidity. I had a hard time finding wines at most of the stops that offered both of these important qualities (at least they are important to me). I did find certain wineries that seemed to go after the lower register of the spectrum, such as GIRARDET, and others like ABACELA where the alcohols were elevated. For those who know me and follow my immense wisdom about wine, I preferred the lower abv stop of GIRARDET, as well as a couple reds at SPANGLER and a red Dolcetto from TESOARIA. I didn’t care for ABACELA or COOPER RIDGE, for example. Both of these were IMO about the guest/reception/club type experience than the focus on what was in the bottle. Just my opinion from what I tasted.
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TNs. There is virtually no TN activity in CT for any of the stops we made, and these were not brand new wineries, so my conclusion is that the Umpqua has yet to draw in the geeks (like me) who would taste and post some TNs to at least inform the CT community. The wines are in the CT database, but the User counts are tiny, as are the community inventories. So, I made a dent in at least someone saying something, posting about 30 TNs to CT.
Below are the TNs for the wines I liked (and bought to bring back home with me). My hope is that these three wines repeat for the positive vibes they gave me when I get around to opening them again at home. Thanks for reading.
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2013 Spangler Vineyards Claret - USA, Oregon, Southern Oregon, Umpqua Valley (6/18/2017)
14.4% abv. This is a Bdx blend and a wine I really enjoyed. I tasted it 2X to make sure and it showed well again. Juicy, inky, lots of blue fruited tones with acidity. I dug this stuff, bought some to try at home. -
2015 Girardet Seyval Blanc Estate - USA, Oregon, Southern Oregon, Umpqua Valley (6/18/2017)
11.6% abv. I really liked this wine, and purchased it to take home. Lots of acidity, tropical notes, floral, lean and really racy, finishing with lemon and river rock. If this holds up for me and the bottle drinks well when I get it home, I’ll celebrate this as a find. -
2015 Tesoaria Dolcetto - USA, Oregon, Southern Oregon, Umpqua Valley (6/18/2017)
13.5% abv. Tannic, some astringence, tangy red fruit. Black cherry and tobacco leaf. Enjoyed this, grabbed a bottle to go.
Posted from CellarTracker
Frank, thanks for the report! We’ll be in Umpqua over the 4th for a couple days so your notes are very timely.
Roger, please post impressions when you are back. I’d enjoy seeing another impression about the area and what things you liked, and what you did not. Enjoy your trip.
Here is an update to my post from earlier this year, as I decided to open the bottle of Spangler Claret I had brought home. As a reminder, this wine was $28 at the winery and appears to still be available for anyone that is curious about it. Thanks for reading.
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2013 Spangler Vineyards Claret - USA, Oregon, Southern Oregon, Umpqua Valley (10/28/2017)
Bought this past June during my Father’s Day weekend trip to Oregon. I don’t recall the wine being this big, but I do remember hitting Spangler towards the end of the day, so my palate (and senses) may have been less calibrated than tonight when I enjoyed the wine singly, some of it early on in the evening without food and a clear palate. Started off really ripe aromatically, with some whiffs of oak and ark fruit, reminding me a bit of Switchback Merlot (the actual blend is 68% Merlot, 15% Cab Franc and 17% Cab Sauv). A bit of heat early on, too. With air, this starts to settle down, showing plum, currant, some tobacco and grip. More red and black in tone, not the blue fruited I recall from June. I had a few glasses but had to call a time-out, as with the wine and a richer meal tonight, I’ll save some final comments for tomorrow…re-tasting a day later, the wine need that dose of air yesterday to allow some of the complexity to come through. There is oak influence here still, and there is elevated ripeness, yet the core of darker cherry fruit gets space to shine through. Deeper and fuller tones, but also clearly more evidence of the Bdx varietals. Age this another 5 years to let the primary nature soften out.
Posted from CellarTracker
Frank, so sorry not to have responded sooner but completely forgot about your request for an update on our trip.
Ours was more of a family get together than a wine-centric event and we were only there for a couple days so we only visited four wineries.
Also, since several months have passed I’m going on faint memories and recollections from our photos as I didn’t take any tasting notes.
The four wineries we visited were:
Reustle-Prayer Rock Vineyards
Delfino Vineyards
Misty Oaks Vineyard
TeSóAria Vineyard & Winery
General take-aways:
The area in and around Roseburg is fairly rural with somewhat limited dining options. We did have a couple of excellent dinners, one at the Parrott House and another at Salud.
Very laid back atmosphere at each of the wineries and we enjoyed each visit.
Most of the wineries are open to walk-in visitors at least on the weekends, many are open all week, in season.
Granted we only stopped in at 4 of the almost 3 dozen wineries, most of the wines we tasted were no more than just average.
Reustle-Prayer Rock Vineyards had the nicest tasting facilities.
TeSóAria had quite a large amount of different grapes they use, and a most interesting take on Bull’s Blood that contains the somewhat rare Kadarka grape.
I really enjoy exploring these out of the ordinary wine areas even if they’re not making the best products, its all part of my overall wine education.