Back in the day, 1991 to be precise, my father and I packed up the family Jeep Wagoneer and road tripped from Moss Beach, California to McMinnville, Oregon. We were on our way to the 5th annual International Pinot Noir Celebration (IPNC). At the time I was only 19 years old but thanks to my dad had already fallen in love with Pinot Noir. In 1991 Pinot Noir and Oregon was still a relatively unproven combo. In fact many of today’s top producers including Archery Summit and Domaine Drouhin Oregon did not even exist yet!
That 1991 IPNC trip with mf father sealed the deal on my life long passion for Pinot Noir. Since then it has been my consistent beverage of choice and it I have even recently started producing artisanal pinot noir under my own label with my buddy Bob. My return to IPNC 17 years later with my wife Shawna, was an extreme reminder of why I love Pinot Noir and the life style around it…
Our IPNC activities started in Portland. We have been hearing amazing things about Portland’s emerging culinary scene so we wanted to taste it for ourselves. We had a rave recommendation from my friend Eric for Le Pigeon so we decided to go ahead and taste it for ourselves. In short, if you are in Portland definitely make a reservation at Le Pigeon and be damn sure to have the foie gras profiterals for desert (paired with a sauternes of course). Here are some shots from Le Pigeon...
To help make sure we were super ready for a full long weekend of Pinot Noir discussion and drinking we spent Thursday preparing… We visited three of our favorite Oregon producers that are all nestled into the beautiful Dundee Hills:
Domaine Drouhin, Domaine Serene and Archery Summit. We had an amzing time at all 3 places. The views were majestic and the wines were even better. We picked up a great tip from our Archery Summit hostess, Serpa, regarding taking milk thistle to help promote liver functions during the long IPNC weekend, thanks Serpa! Here are some shots from our explorations of the Dundee Hills.
After traversing the red hills of Dundee we were ready for a bite to eat. Luckily we had the foresight to sign up for a Sineann winemaker dinner at Bistro Maison in McMinville.. The dinner was amazing. Bistro Maison is about real deal French cooking and on this special night all the dishes were prepared to pair with Peter’s wines. The crowd was a local Oregon Pinot crazed crowd. Most of whom were not doing IPNC besides the winemaker dinner and the infamous Saturday night salmon bake. Peter spent a good deal of time at each table and won people over with his amazing wines and seemingly mellow yet opinionated self.
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