A Portland Pickup and Seven Hours in Willamette Wine Country
A van collects you in Portland, three Willamette wineries follow, and the list is put together around the group that booked.
Somebody in your group would normally have to stay sober and drive. That is the arithmetic of a wine day, and it is the first thing this tour takes away. A driver collects you where you are staying in the Portland area and returns you to the same address at the end of it.
Pinot noir accounts for about 70 percent of everything planted in the Willamette Valley, so a day of three tasting rooms will run red unless you ask for something else. Eleven smaller appellations sit inside the valley, and sorting them is a large part of what you are paying for. Three stops, chosen by people who taste here for a living.
The wine country portion of the day runs about seven hours, with pickup across the Portland metro and a drop-off at the same door. Lunch travels with the van. Booking closes 24 hours before departure and confirmation comes through straight away.
Willamette Valley Wine Tour with LunchA Great Oregon Wine Tour · 7.5 hours door to door · ages 21 and over · 4.9 from 533 reviewswww.viator.comThe Winery List Is Built Around Who Booked
No fixed itinerary is published for this tour, and that is the point. The operator assembles each day's route once the booking is in, working from the size of the group, the kind of wine it wants, and which tasting rooms can seat that many people at once. The stated filter is short: wines worth the stop, a winery that is historic or family-owned, and a story worth telling on the drive over.
Stops run between 30 and 90 minutes, with no set clock on any of them. Most days include one walk through a production facility, with tasting only at the others, though you can usually wander the grounds. If there is a winery you already have in mind, say so when you book. Whether it fits depends on where it sits, what it charges, and whether it takes groups.
Nobody in the Van Has to Drive
Pickup is door to door. Hotels, motels, private homes, short-term rentals, a place of business: the van comes to the address you give and brings you back to it.
Pickup across the Portland metro, Clackamas, Beaverton, Wilsonville and Lake Oswego usually falls between 9:00 AM and 9:30 AM, with a return between 5:00 PM and 5:30 PM. Guests already staying out in wine country, in McMinnville, Newberg, Dundee or Sherwood, are collected around 10:00 AM and back between 4:00 PM and 4:30 PM.
Two limits are worth knowing before you book. The company is not licensed to pick up in Washington State, which rules out an address across the river in Vancouver. Coast and Salem addresses can be arranged only as a private booking.
The fleet runs from an eight-passenger van up to a twenty-passenger bus, all of them with large windows and a sound system you can connect to. A shared departure usually carries between two and twelve people.
Lunch Lands at the Second Stop
Lunch is a wine country picnic, and the second winery of the day is where you eat it. It comes with the tour, as does bottled water in the van. Nothing about it is formal.
The pouring is the part that is not covered. Tasting fees start at around USD 30 per person and are charged at every stop. The operator says it gets them waived where it can, though the safer way to budget is to assume you will pay them three times. Gratuity is also left to you. There is no fuel surcharge.
The Couple Who Built It
A Great Oregon Wine Tour belongs to Wayne and Camille Oppenheimer. Wayne grew up in Beaverton and started paying attention to Oregon wine in the mid-1980s, when, by his own count, the northern Willamette Valley had a handful of wineries then, more than 500 now. He spent part of the 1990s in Napa working at Mondavi Winery, came back, and started this company with a minivan, a winery map, a website and a new flip phone. He ran a wine shop in southeast Portland at the same time and filmed interviews with winemakers for an internet show.
Camille moved to Oregon from Orange County in 1996 and did not care for wine at all at the time. She took a seasonal job in the Willamette Valley Vineyards tasting room in November 1999, pouring and putting holiday gift baskets together. The two of them met in 2009, out in wine country, while she was selling winemaking equipment.
Depending on the day, one of them may be the person driving. Otherwise it is one of their guides: by the company's own account some are sommeliers, some have run wine programs and distribution companies, and the longest-serving has been guiding here for more than eight years.
The tour is sold for ages 21 and over, and every traveler on it is booked as an adult. Cancel at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure for a full refund, which is also the point at which booking closes. A departure that does not reach its minimum number of travelers can be called off, and the operator gets in touch before the day.
A full valley day, and a seat by the window for the ride back.