Wine Tasting Around the Rogue Valley
“Wine is the most civilized things in the world and one of the most natural things of the world that has been brought to the greatest perfection.” - Ernest Hemingway.
As you know the trip to this region in Southern Oregon was inspired by a desire to visit Crater Lake. In my very typical tunnel vision research, I focused on all there was to see and do around Crater Lake and Klamath Falls where we were staying. Medford was just the gateway, a means to get in and out. It wasn’t until my traveling friend Geeta said we can do some wine tasting on our last day as we head to the airport and out of Medford that I googled wine tasting in and around Medford. I was a bit taken aback when the map showed the plethora of wineries in the area.
Lesson to be learned, widen your horizons. Well, they were certainly widened as we spent a delightful day driving along the wine trail and visiting a few carefully picked wineries. Ou rationale for picking the wineries that we did was as unorthodox as we ourselves are.
Our first stop was at the Valley View Winery which according to my research was the oldest winery in the region.
As it turned out, that was a bit of misnomer and more of a marketing ploy. Yes, originally the first winery in the region was established right here but it subsequently went out of business and closed down. Then in the 1970s or so, the land was bought and seeded with new vines and ultimately produced wine.
Under the current leadership, the wine is relatively new but getting some awards and getting its own recognition. The lady who ran the tasting room is the wife of the winemaker and was justifiably proud of the legacy that the winery is now establishing.
We enjoyed the beautiful setting, tasted about 6 wines for about $15 and enjoyed a chat and some recommendations of other wineries to visit in the area.
It was one of the recommendations that landed us at the Red Lily Winery on the Applegate trail. The vineyard is located in a beautiful setting along the Applegate River and people can take their wines down to the river and sit at the tables set up with umbrellas to enjoy the wine and the view.
Red Lily is a family owned and operated winery, well known for its terroir inspired wines. The winemaker is a local woman born and brought up in the Rogue Valley.
This was as far as we went towards Grants Pass. Given our short clock and a couple more wineries we wanted to visit before heading towards the airport we turned around and headed back towards Jacksonville.
We passed the quaint town of Jacksonville enjoying the shops and restaurants and people milling around to head towards the Dos Mariposas winery which we had primarily picked because they boasted a lavender farm.
The winery boasted a colorful facade. The tasting room and patio with its colorful umbrellas overlooked the vineyards and a pond which had ducks swimming in it along with the lavender patch where one could actually cut lavender stalks to take home.
Walking through the vineyard ripe with bunches of grapes reminded me of my very first trip to Napa where we found red grapes hanging on the vines by the parking lot. We didn’t know better and actually plucked grapes straight from the vine and ate them even before we headed in for a tasting. Thank God! I’ve grown up a bit since then.
The lake was so beautiful that we actually contemplated changing our lunch plans and potentially eating here on the beautiful patio but thankfully we didn’t because we had the most superb lunch and tasting experience further on.
Our next stop was at the Dancin Vineyard where we tasted a variety of their whites and one of their reds, ultimately settling on the Moscato to accompany our lunch and buying the chardonnay as well as the Moscato to have shipped home.
While the winery did not advertise their lavender, they had many varieties of lavender growing along the path towards the tasting room and behind the tasting room.
We ate a superb lunch and tasted our wine sitting on a patio overlooking this pond with beautiful koi fish milling around.
Time was getting on and we reluctantly tore ourselves away from Dancin and its wonderful ambiance to hit the last winery on our list. The Edenvale Winery which was established around a pear orchard.
There was a wedding happening in the winery and the Voorhees Mansion that we had been keen to tour was closed to visitors and the event folks were setting up for the wedding even as the groomsmen for posing for pictures.
The thriving pear orchards provide opportunities for the winery to produce pear ciders etc. By now we were full of lunch and buzzed from wine tasting so we skipped the tasting room and walked around the property before calling it a day and heading towards the airport.
On our way we crossed the large Harry and David facility as we geared up for the next adventure in our weekend. Given the global outage from the day before would we actually make it home. Thankfully we did after a few nail-biting delays around 2:00AM.
What stands out from this day in the Rogue Valley is how open and friendly it is over here as compared to the commercialization we now find in Napa and even Paso Robles.
All in all, an excellent trip with a lot of different activities and places to see.