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Published: April 5th 2010
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Good Morning, Portland!
We woke up yesterday and were soon on the road. We wanted to hit a couple more wineries before heading to Portland. First stop was the Carlton Wine Studio. It's kind of a winery co-op of sorts. There are 8 winemakers working under one roof sharing pressers, bottling equipment, and barrel storage. It gives you an opportunity to taste a few different wineries in just one stop, but we weren't overly impressed with the tasting there. Next stop was Domaine Drouhin. Drouhin is a famous French wine maker who was impressed by the quality of grapes coming out of Oregon and sent his daughter, Veronique, to open a winery. It combines proven French techniques with the unique benefits of the Oregon soil, which produces some of the best Pinot grapes around. Drouhin winery is perched on a hill in Dundee and the grounds are gorgeous, but it is a large commercial winery, and their wines are available just about everywhere. We drove around Dundee Hills a bit more and happened upon White Rose winery just up from Drouhin. The property has many old vines on it and the tasting room is in the attic of a barn
that is built into a hill. We tasted 4 wines there and they were each delicious. We decided to go together on a bottle of Pinot Noir that we both really liked. Pinots age well, so we're going to save the bottle to have on our 2 year anniversary. Having enough wine in the trunk to be detrimental to our gas mileage we headed off to Portland.
We got into Portland yesterday and our first stop was Buffalo Wild Wings. :D We enjoyed a delicious lunch and waddled back to the car to check in at the Mark Spencer Hotel just a few blocks away. Francis found a great deal that included free parking and a coupon book for area restaurants and attractions. We dropped off our bags and headed out to explore. Our first stop was the famous Powell Book store, the largest independently owned book store in the world. Francis got a huge new cookbook by Thomas Keller and I got some gifts and souvenirs. We saved $5 with a coupon from our book, plus in Oregon there's no sales tax! We dropped our heavy load off at the hotel and decided to head to the oldest
craft brewery in Portland (aka Beervana). We decided to split a beer flight of their 8 current draught beers. We were still full from BWW, so we just had chowder and chili for dinner. After dinner we decided to call it a night. It had been a busy day and there's a lot to see and do today!
Today we're off to explore the city in the daylight. We want to see Washington Park, home of the International Rose Test Garden. I also want to meander through the Chinese Gardens and check out the many bridges that criss cross the river.
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