SIP 47- Dawn and I visit Sake One & the Montinore Winery

Well, Dawn’s come up to visit again, so its time we went out and did something a little different than hanging around Portland and going to the regular restaurants.

So, we decided to head south and west past Forest Grove, Oregon to visit a couple of the stops on the SIP 47 Winery tour in Western Oregon.  

Now, normally, one starts up at the northern end of Oregon State Highway 47 near Banks where it intersects Highway 26, and then make your way south through the beautiful country side till your reach McMinville, Oregon where State Highway 47 ends at 99W. 

Since we didn’t have enough time, or drinking capacity to hit all the wineries, we decided to shorten ours to a couple of stops we were most interested in, the Sake One Brewery, and the Montinore  Estate Vineyards.

 

SakeOne

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Now, yer probably going, “Brewery?  What’s a brewery doing on a Wine Tour?”

Well, if a facility produces sake, Japanese Rice Wine, it is usually called a Brewery vs a Winery, don’t ask me why, they call it a Brewery, so I’m going to go along with it .

For those that have never drank sake before, lemme warn you, Sake is a lot more potent than your average Merlot or Pinot Noir.  The average alcohol content is around 20% with sake whereas wine is usually around 13% at the upper end.

But, we find it a lot more enjoyable than a great many of the more bitter selections that you find in normal wines, which is why we enjoy it.

If you’ve never tasted sake, you should really try it, at least once.

 

Most of the businesses along the SIP 47 Winery tour offer a sampling of various different vintages and types, usually called a “flight”.    This is traditionally the best way to expose your palette to a fairly varying range of flavors for each of the locations along the tour. 

Since I was driver, Dawn did the drinking for both of us, trying the standard Sake flight at Sake One.  Sake One offers a couple of different flight options, including one that involves small food samplings coupled with the various sakes to allow you to learn about what food pairings go best with what sake, this is called the Sake Shock Flight, similar to pairing white and red wines with various meats and cheeses.

 

Dawn decided to enjoy the Toji Flight, which covers a fairly wide range of different Sakes, including those in the shortest flight, the Kura flight. 

 

Out of what was sampled, Dawn and I agreed that our two favorites were the Momo-Kawa Medium Dry Junmai Gingo craft Sake and the Yoshi-no-Gawa Junmai Gingo sake.  Of their regular local American craft sakes, one we heartily recommend is the Moonstone Coconut Lemon-grass Sake, it’s really good, trust me, you’ll be hooked!

 

 

 

 

While Dawn continued her way through her flight of sakes, I meandered a bit, snapping a few pictures of the Tasting Room and the Brewery Building next door.  The Brewery building has tours daily at 1, 2, and 3pm.

 

Montinore Estate Vineyards

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Our next stop along our short tour for the day was the Montinore Estate Vineyards.  One of the more majestic vineyards along the route, though the name has a bit of humor.  The original proprietor who built the estate and the vineyards named it as a shortening of the phrase “Montana in Oregon.” 

Many people when they first encounter the name think that it is some fanciful French name, when in reality, the name came from the fact that the original proprietor made his money running mines in Montana before retiring to Oregon. 

Today, the Montinore Estate is run by Rudy Marchesi, who came to wine and Oregon via Bronx & New Jersey.  He was guided in his work by what he learned from his Italian Grandparents and came it Oregon in hopes of producing wine that showcased the truest expression of the land in which it grew. 

Montinore’s wine is particularly influenced by the ash that fell upon the ground when Mt. St. Helens erupted in 1980, which lends it a unique flavor that is not present in wine grown in earth that was not enhanced with the volcanic ash.

When you first arrive at Montinore, the first thing that greets you is a set of classic European influenced gates, reminiscent of the old family vineyards of France. 

As you make your way up the smooth one-lane asphalt road up the hill atop which the winery is situated with a panoramic view of the surrounding valley, the second thing that will catch your eye is the absolutely beautiful estate house set amongst regal hard woods and firs whose green canopies would lend the manor a sheltered pocket of tranquility, seeming isolating it from the bustling world only miles away.

 

From the parking lot, it is a short walk up the paved trail to the Winery proper and its ornate tasting room. 

On slow winter days, much like when we visited, the main tasting room door is locked, and one must push a little “call” button to ring the main tasting hall to be brought in. 

Montinore, like most wineries also offers a tasting flight, which we recommend, but caution those that might have problems with Sulfates to politely pass on the Verjus, the non-alcoholic beverage that they close the flight with, as a key flavoring ingredient is Sulfur Dioxide. 

 

Once again, Dawn did the drinking for us, though I did lightly taste a couple of the wines she particularly liked.  Two of the wines we particularly liked, though desert wines, were the 2010 Riesling Sweet Reserve and the 2008 Frolic Gewürztraminer Sweet Reserve. 

 

Montinore wrapped up our short Wine Tour, and on the way home to the camper Dawn napped quite soundly.  We hope to continue on the SIP 47 Winery tour as time allows over the course of 2012, and hope to write more about what we find. 

 

Thanks for reading .

Update on the Heated Water Connection

Well, we've had roughly three or so days of hard and constant freezing weather with the temps down in the teens and twenties during the night and more than one night with some fairly strong wind blowing through.

The water coming into the camper via my insulated connection never froze.

The water line going to my toilet on the other hand froze last night. I just finished thawing it out and redoing its insulation.

I'd pulled the insulation earlier in the month to replace the shoring block under the shower floor (The old one had fallen apart, it was made of several 1x2s that had been glued together, there's a nice solid piece of 2x3 in there now), but I guess it never sealed back up well when I reinstalled it because I had this insulation present during the winter of 2008 which had constant cold wind and temperatures staying in the teens and the water line to the toilet never froze up back then.

So, I pulled all of the old pipe insulation after thawing the water line with my heat gun and then installed some new thicker pipe insulation and then wrapped it in a reflectix-based insulation tape to make it as insulated as possible.

The reflectix is a shiny foil sided insulation and works well at reflecting cold away from the line and also reflecting its own heat back in on itself.

With luck, the water line shouldn't freeze up again.

Riding the Mt. Hood Railroad–Part 1, the Quest for a place to stay

Howdy folks, time for another little adventure with the trusty Redneck Express :). This time, the misses and I are off to ride the Scenic Mt. Hood Railroad from the beautiful Columbia River Gorge up through the densely forested hills and emerging in Parkdale, Oregon, roughly at the foot of Mt. Hood itself.

 

Our original plan was to drive to Hood River, Oregon, the base starting point of the Mt. Hood Railroad, and stay overnight just across the river at the Bridge RV Park & Campground. 

Mt. Hood Railroad

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Bridge RV Park & Campground

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However, when we got to Bridge RV Park, we discovered to our dismay that the park was squeezed right in between the highway and the very busy BNSF freight railway line that skirted the edge of the Columbia River Gorge along the Washington side of the river. 

Given that we’ve slept in campgrounds before that had trains next to them (Ainsworth State Park in Oregon comes to mind)  I walked up to the office to see what sites were open and to get an envelope to fill out our night registration. 

It was at this point I had our second little surprise of the evening in that the price listed on the door at the park was double what was advertised on Good Sam and on their own website. 

At this point, we said, “Forget it” and pulled back out onto the highway to see if we could locate another park. 

The last bit that had really set us off and had us driving east down the Washington side of the river was that we had just paid a toll to cross the bridge over to Washington, and it had been a rather nerve wracking drive across, with the bridge lanes barely wide enough to accommodate the camper and truck with tall concrete “jersey” barriers on either side of us. 

By this point, it was rather late and we were both tired and my memory was a little fuzzy, so we drove on figuring that we’d find a campground of some kind not too far down the road. 

This, proved not to be the case. 

A big detractor to our efforts is my plans for our night stay were kind of last minute and I hadn’t taken the time to detail any other alternative campgrounds in the area.  So, thanks to my great planning skills we were flying blind, watching the sides of the road for signs for another Campground or RV Park as we further and further east. 

After spending at least an hour wandering around rather lost, I managed to find a Les Schwab that had left their complimentary internet on and pulled back up Google Maps and located something that was near to where we were. 

Ironically, in our night-blinded wanderings we’d managed to pull up just shy of Maryhill, WA, location of the infamous WWI Stone Henge memorial that stood far above on the sheer gorge walls.  Down at river level, below this monument on the outskirts of the tiny fruit growers town of Maryhill is a Washington State Park. 

This is where we ended up staying the night, forty miles away from our destination the following morning. 

We drove through the nearly deserted park roughly twice, before locating the bath house and snagging one of the sites in the loop closest to the river.  The water in the park was off this time of year, so we made good use of my onboard tank and the auxiliary that I had filled in the event that the Bridge RV Park & Campground didn’t pan out. 

Settling in took very little time at all and within about 20 minutes we were on our way over to the bath house to grab a hot shower before returning to the camper, having a quick bite of dinner and heading off to a deep sleep. 

 

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The next morning came with bits of blue poking through the sea grey clouds hanging low above us. 

The view of the river and its proximity were unknown to us at the time we’d pulled in the night before was a complete mystery to us.  While we could faintly hear the sounds of water and the occasional barge that made its way up and down the river, we didn’t have a clue as to how far the river actually was. 

It was pretty close.

 

A quick look around revealed that the park was no less deserted than it had been the night before.  In the spring and summer I can only imagine that this park is extremely full and popular amongst travelers and the wind surfing crowd. 

Right now, its quiet and filled with slowly turning colors of a brisk Washington fall.   If we had more time, this would have made a nice place to work from to explore the surrounding area a little more. 

 

Pretty soon, breakfast was a memory and we were on the road again, covering miles on I-84 to get us back to Hood River and our waiting train.