My wife Janet and I traveled to Portland to visit our two Oregon wineries, considered to be among the finest Pinot producres in the country. Our first stop was at Domaine Serene, nestled on a prime hilltop site in the bucolic Willamette Valley an hour south of Portland. We were met by Allan Carter, the winery’s Director of Marketing, an East Coast transplant captivated by the outstanding, ultra-premium wines produced by Domaine Serene. After an extensive tour of the winery’s state-of-the art facilties, we setlled in the Tasting Room and went through the range of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay bottlings. It was about 9:30 am in the morning, and intuitively one would think that this may not be the best time to taste wine, but our palates are actually the most sensitive and accurate at this early time (we had our Starbucks a couple of hours earlier). The wines were simply amazing: fresh, elegant, great concentration but not cloying, with distinctive minerality and acidity. The Evenstad Reserve, which scored 92 points by Harvey Steiman of The Wine Spectator, showed why it is one of the finest Pinot Noirs in America. What intrigued me about Domaine Serene and the primary reason why I sought out this winery was the headline grabbing event held 3 years ago, wherein Domaine Serene topped Domaine de la Romanee Conti in a blind tasting by 37 wine industry professionals from throughout the United States. In tasting flights from the 1998, 1999 and 2000 vintages, Domaine Serene wines swept the tastings, ranking first and second place in every flight. This, I thought, was simply amazing. Being a Burgundy lover myself and a member of Honolulu’s ‘That’s Burgundy’ wine group, I just had to see and experience this for myself. For more information on this historic wine tasting event, please visit www.domaineserene.com/update.htm

Next stop half an hour away was Beaux Freres, a producer of Burgundian-like pinots that has gained notoriety not just from the great wines being fashioned by Mike Etzel, but also because his brother-in-law, a certain Robert Parker, is a co-owner. We met with Mike and his Director of Marketing, Kurt Johnson, to tour the vineyards and taste the wines. This visit to Beaux Freres reaffirmed my belief that the winery continues to produce world-class pinot noir from tiny yields and ripe fruit that expresses the vineyard terroir in the most natural and authentic manner possible.

The most surprising revelation of this trip was Portland: it has become an exciting, vibrant urban oasis featuring innovative restaurants and avant garde wine bars. We had fabulous meals at Bluehour, in the uber-chic Pearl district, and Paley’s Place, the recipient of a James Beard Chef of the Year award. What to do between meals? Wine bars, of course, and Portland has no shortage of them. We found a gem in Noble Rot, the quintessential neighborhood wine bar featuring flights of Northwest wines and other old world selections. Savoring a flight of Oregon pinots that included our Domaine Serene Yamhill Cuvee and Beaux Freres Willamette Valley (formerly known as Belles Soeurs), we toasted to what may become a new favored weekend destination spot, a relatively short 5 hour flight from Honolulu.