Welcome to Wine Country

 Wasabi Girl came to visit me for a day recently, and since she had just turned 21 I decided to take her on a little wine tour through my neighborhood. I live in the Willamette Valley in Oregon and you can't swing a cat without hitting a winery. I even have "Wine Country" license plates.

We did the complete winery tour at Lange Vinyards and it was amazing. We kept getting dazzled by the statistics. Did you know each barrel holds 300 bottles of wine? There were rooms and rooms of barrels, steel tanks, and even a concrete "egg." The neutral nature of the concrete gives the wine a bright, clean flavor.

The Willamette Valley is sometimes called the "Burgundy of the West," because we are at the same latitude as Burgundy France. The similar growing conditions yield rich reds, although we have plenty of wonderful wines of all types.

At the end of the tour we were able to taste and compare a variety of their offerings and of course, I ended up buying a few bottles.

So if you ever come visit, prepare to meet some wine. One of the perks of living in Wine Country.