Alesong Brewing & Blending

Do yourself a favor. Just stop for a minute. Step off this treadmill we call life, get together with some friends, and relax for a bit. We recently did just that at Alesong Brewing & Blending, and I can't recommend it enough. I am not a beer aficionado. But I do love thoughtfully-crafted food, and …

Willamette Valley Cheese Company: Salem

I love driving Oregon's back roads. You never know what you are going to find among the tractors, corn fields, and filbert orchards. Yesterday, it was Willamette Valley Cheese Co. We were somewhere west of Salem on our way to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnville. The directions we had started out with …

Elkton Oregon: Wine Tastes Different Here

  Fall is here and, for me, it brings thoughts of wine tasting. Over the past 25 years or so, I feel like I've had a front row seat to the blossoming Oregon wine industry. With family and friends I've sampled wine in historic buildings in downtown Hood River, up dusty lanes lined with oak …

Johnson Farms: North Eugene

Nestled  just outside of north Eugene, where urban growth butts against farmland, sits Johnson Farms. Established in 1915, Johnson's is a century farm -- a farm that has been owned by the same family for over 100 years. Johnson's began when newlyweds Alfred Johnson and Oma Davis started growing vegetables and raising livestock to sale. The …

Agrarian Ales

When you compare the number of breweries that I've written about on this blog (0) with the number of wineries (about 17) and distilleries (4) it should be pretty obvious that I'm not really a beer drinker. I enjoy a nice beer on occasion but rarely do I seek it out. That changed yesterday when …

cgFEAST: Building a healthy food system in Cottage Grove

Last April, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, the First Presbyterian Church in downtown Cottage Grove hosted its annual Meet My Farmer event. Vendors and participants packed the main hall promoting and discussing a wide variety of food-related activities. A woman passed out leaflets promoting a local community garden, a farmer discussed her raw milk and …

Harris Bridge Vineyard

Tucked into a tiny valley, between the historic Harris Covered Bridge and a railroad track, just outside the town of Philomath is Harris Bridge Vineyard which specializes in dessert wines, sweet vermouth, and aperitifs. We've tasted at a lot of wineries throughout Oregon, especially in the Willamette and Umpqua Valleys. So when I first read about Harris Bridge …

Grants Pass Get-Away

Earlier this summer, we stumbled across J. Scott Winery in downtown Eugene which sources many of their grapes from vineyards in the Applegate Valley in southern Oregon. We fell in love with the wines – especially the Albarino – and knew we wanted to explore the area in person, some day. When the opportunity for a long …

J. Scott Cellars: Eugene

I love discovering neat places totally by accident. Like last weekend when we stumbled across J. Scott Cellars, part of Eugene's new "urban wine district." Saturday, late in the afternoon, we were up in Eugene taking care of some shopping and errands before heading over to some friends' house for dinner. Our last errand was a …

Territorial Tastings

Territorial Highway follows along the western edge of the lower Willamette Valley. Back in 1859, when Oregon became a state, it was part of a network of territorial roads which crisscrossed the valley and provided passage from the California border to the Puget Sound area in Washington. Today, Territorial Highway is a lazy back road, meandering past wineries, vineyards, alpaca …