About this time last June I was on an airplane headed from Atlanta, Georgia to Portland, Oregon for a little wine outing called Oregon Pinot Camp that I honestly did not know that much about. I was invited, which by the way is the only way to get into this event (not that I am trying to brag, I'm more keeping you from spending endless hours on trying to get into Pinot Camp), by Tahmiene Momtazi the winemaker from Maysara Winery located in McMinnville, Oregon. Now I had heard of this mythical Pinot Camp, but had never met anybody that had actually been. So I bought a plane ticket, got on the airplane, and prepared for whatever this crazy adventure would bring....and boy did it bring the pain! To begin I will try not to bore you with too much of the geeky stuff that a true wine nerd like me really enjoyed about Pinot Camp and Oregon as a whole. I will also try not to include too many stories of drunken retard ism and debauchery....just a little. Lastly, as I have stated many times, please bear with me...some of that nights got a little blurry and some of the mornings were rather painful....as to be expected at such a magnanimous event!
So to answer the most obvious questions, to go ahead and get it out of the way, what is Oregon Pinot Camp? This is an event that the Oregon winegrowers association, Oregon winery owners, and distributors all over the country have put together to educate wine buyers, sommeliers, wine shop owners, restaurant owners, and anybody else that may sell wine for a living on exactly what is going on in the Oregon wine world. It is a four day, four night experience of wine seminars, wine tasting experiments, ob-seen dinner experiences, and most of all first hand tut-ledge from some of the most knowledgeable wine people on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Moreover, it is a complete immersion in the Oregon wine experience. We got to sample wines that I can honestly say you will not find anywhere in the world, get dirt between our fingers, and hold conversations with people that will forget more about wine than I will ever know. So as you can imagine, for a cork-dork like myself, this is comparable to letting Charlie Sheen loose in the Playboy mansion with a pocket full of Viagra!
To begin, the day that I landed in Portland was the same day that The US soccer team played Gahna in the world cup to move onto to the quarter-finals. Now if you know anything about Portland than you know that is probably the most soccer crazed city in the entire United States of America...no way I am missing this party! So shortly after touchdown Tahmiene and I found ourselves in downtown Portland drinking a nice glass of Guinness and chanting USA, USA, USA....to no avale...we lost in overtime....oh well....no need to worry ourselves with such a terrible thing. Instead we headed into the heart of the Oregon wine world...the Willamette Valley!
As we headed south she told me a little about the difference in Oregon as a wine growing region and say Napa. First off Oregon has a myriad of different types of soil....and not just spread over the length of the different AVA's...no... in some vineyards as tiny as a few acres you may have four or five different types of soil. You probably ask yourself "doesn't this make growing a consistent product a pain in the neck?" Well the answer is yes and no...it makes a winemaker do much more research on their land and it also makes it much harder to plan what type of grape to plant....but the yes far outweighs this. When you have alot of varying soil types then you get alot of varying flavors from the grapes that come from this soil. This means that when you go to blend the final wine you have great depth and complexity in that wine...which is what makes Oregon dirt so great. Another point that she pointed out to me is that Oregon's climate is quite different from Napa. It's average temperature is about four to five degrees cooler and their is much more sunshine...which sounds like a bad thing. Then she mentioned an interesting fact that I had never considered...the lattitude of Oregon. Oregon is so far north, that other than Alaska, it has the longest days of anywhere in the US...which for grapes is a dream come true. To produce great wine you need long sunny days, that are not too hot or too cold....which is Oregon in a nutshell. Then to elaborate even further, this is the perfect climate for my favorite grape of all....Pinot Noir!!!
Arriving at Tahmiene's house I was told to get dressed for an outside tasting and picnic and was told that we would probably be going out after words for a "drink"....that's like saying Captain Ahab might go after Moby Dick. So I dressed for cool weather and prepared my liver for what was to come. We took off for a little winery right in the heart of the Willamette Valley named Sokol Blosser. Pulling into the driveway I had not noticed something...partly from the Guinness and partly from the jet-lag....it was already 7pm and the sun was still high in the sky. Tahmiene pointed this fact out to me and I really began to appreciate the difference of this amazing place I had been transported to. We walked up to the middle of one of the of the vineyards and we were in the middle of about sixty different tables that each represented a different winery and were all there to showcase the very best wines that Oregon had to offer. Now if you read my blog last week you know that I first did a little recon....Domaine Serene, check....St. Innocent, check....Argyle, check....all the big boys had brought out their big guns....yep this was going to be a shit show! Next to start with a little bubbly...Argyle's Brut...perfect....then onto the heavier stuff....Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Merlot, Caberent...everything was here. Just when I thought maybe I was imbibing a little too heavy they opened up the BBQ pits and began serving us whole roasted pig and ribs that would have made the most southern pitmaster proud. Now with my belly full of delicious BBQ and unbelievable wines it was time for a nap right? Nope....not in these parts...now it is time to head out into downtown McMinnville with one of the most unusual assortment of strangers that all had only one thing in common....we were all campers at Oregon Pinot Camp 2010. Sometime around two am Tahmine dragged me away from a conversation with a winemaker about whole cluster fermentation so that we could get some rest....after all it was going to be a long day that began at seven am....which for me was the earliest I would have been awake all year.
Sure enough at six fifty five...after working out, drinking twelve cups of coffee, and probably doing some work at her winery....Tahmiene was knocking on my door to make sure I would be ready in time to get onto the school bus....yes I said school bus! A small fact that she had not told me was that the transportation for all of the campers via school bus. Now I am not talking air conditioned, bucket seated, buses....no I am talking big yellow, stinky school buses. At first I was a little curious about this....but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. What a great way to transport some of America's most influential wine buyers all over Oregon than a big yellow school bus! Once again I was beginning to fall in love with this place and all of the fun that surrounded it. So as we arrived at the our bus stop there sat a big yellow, sixth grade reminiscent, McMinnville county school bus....but more importantly than our transportation needs were the mimosas that were also furnished....which would be a necessary key to the success of the day! Loaded up and ready to rock we all where headed to somewhere which I truly never thought I would be....the home of the original Spruce Goose! Our first stop was at Evergreen Aviation in McMinnville for a much needed mimosa refill and breakfast break. All of the six school buses arrived and we were led into the massive museum at Evergreen Aviation where as we ate we wondered among pieces of aviation history. Planes like the B-17 Flying Fortress, ME-109, Spitfire, and of course Howard Hughes' own Spruce Goose. Now to some people this was only a mild morning of entertainment....but to me this was the whole Charlie Sheen Viagra thing times ten. I always have been a huge airplane buff...and to get to stand inside the Spruce Goose...with a mimosa in hand no less...well lets just say that Howard Hughes himself was probably never that happy in the belly of that monster...at least with all of his clothes on! After breakfast we were led into the IMAX theater here at the museum where were shown a brief video about the reason for Oregon Pinot Camp and then each winemaker introduced his or herself. Then back to our buses...but something was amiss with the red bus...my bus....we had been most deliberately attacked!!! Spread all over the inside of our bus was a mass of hundreds of fake green dollar bills....about waste deep! Now we could only assume that this came from our newly formed nemesis....the green bus! After a little clean up all of the red bus campers began an immediate wartime session to plan retaliation....and retaliate we did!!! However before we decided to enact our revenge we had some serious wine tasting and experimentation to complete...so after less than twenty four hours in Oregon I had accomplished so much....soccer, wine tasting, roasted pig, winemaker interrogation, classic airplanes, revenge of sabotage, and IMAX theaters ....but I had not even scratched the surface of this thing called "Pinot Camp"....
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