Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that you get to spend time with your love ones today and eat all the mash potatoes, turkey, and cranberry sauce you want! The Renaissance Man and I are heading to my parents house this afternoon and will be partaking in a small family event. It always feels good to be with family this time of year!
As I mentioned before, we spent the summer frolicking in the sunshine and I didn’t do a very good job of keeping up with blog posts. However, I can say that I really appreciate that I kept taking pictures, because as the weather starts to get cold and rainy, looking at our summer fun certainly lifts my spirits.
My friend Julie came to visit me in early August, she was in town caddying for one of her good friends who was playing in the US Women’s Amateur…more on that in an upcoming blog post…
When Julie is in town, we always make time for wine tasting! And this time, one of our destinations was Rex Hill Vineyards. I drive by Rex Hill every single day on my way to and from work, and am slightly embarrassed that it took me almost two years to finally do a wine tasting!? But then again, we have a lot of wineries in the Willamette Valley…
So if you’ve been following along with me here at Weekends in Dundee, you know that I essentially “took the summer off.” Which I loved…but it also makes me kind of sad knowing that I frolicked in the sunshine soaking up all that Dundee has to offer, and didn’t share a darn bit of it with you!? So selfish, but it sure was a beautiful summer in wine country!
This past weekend the heat was on! Temperatures were up in the 90’s and my allergies were causing me all sorts of trouble. So what do you do when it’s hot out, but you can’t be outside? Go wine tasting!
We first learned about The Carlton Winemakers Studio from Eric Hamacher at a special tasting event over Thanksgiving weekend, and we were happy to finally go check it out!
Our neighbor always has the inside track when it comes to fun wine tasting events. She’s a tasting room manager and knows just about everyone in the industry! So when we were coming up with our itinerary Memorial Day Weekend she mentioned an event we just had to attend…a special tasting at the Historic Medici Vineyard Estate.
The Renaissance Man has been talking about Maysara Winery for a while now. They’re known in wine country for their Demeter Certified Biodynamic Vineyard, and we just had to go check it out…wine tasting and land management practices, totally intriguing right? We visited over Memorial Day Weekend with a group including our neighbors and some friends from Portland!
Saturday was a busy day in Dundee…we attended the “Taste Dundee Block Party” to kick-off Oregon Wine Month! Yay for the month of May! The celebration was a neighborhood type event held in the Chapter 24 parking lot right off of OR99W. The event featured wine from fifteen Dundee wineries along with small bites from six local restaurants. My kind of neighborhood block party!
Spring wine shipments are here! It’s one of my favorite times of year seeing which wines were included as part of the shipment and to venture out to the wineries to pick them up. Picking up wine shipments is always a great excuse to go visit wine country! I just love the views from Sokol Blosser, we’re members there, and it’s one of my favorite places to hangout on the weekends.
Some of our “chosen family” was in town at the end of February, and yes I know it’s almost the end of March, but I had to share. They’re huge foodies from the East Coast, and so we decided it was time to finally try out The Painted Lady. The Renaissance Man and I have been hearing about The Painted Lady since we moved to Dundee and I can tell you that the rave reviews were well earned!
We had an eight o’clock dinner reservation and the whole upstairs room of the house to ourselves. What’s neat about the location is the charm of the old Victorian house. The house is part of the “painted lady movement” thus the restaurant’s name, The Painted Lady.
