Beautiful Wine Grapes in the Umpqua Valley

We took a day off of working in the garden to drive up to MELROSE to get a canopy for Hilary's truck. Melrose I said??? Where is that....Hilary said it's up by Roseburg....She did her research and had the whole day planned for us! Farmers Markets, Museum, Wineries.....Wineries??? But I had a little something in store for her too....a Giant Cinnamon Roll at Heaven On Earth in the little area known as Quines Creek. Here is what we shared with a cup of coffee....(actually we only each had a bit of it, then took it along with us for the next day - or two!!!)

After meeting up with the man that Hilary bought the truck canopy with we drove to our first winery - heck I haven't been on a wine tasting tour since I was about 26 or so...that is 26 years old, not 1926!!!! So our first winery was Delfino Vineyards.  We were greeted by a couple of barking dogs that just wanted to say "hi" to us....The gal who waited on us was really great! She gave us a wine brochure and explained that if we went to 5 vineyards, had each of them stamp it, that it would go into a drawing for several cases of wine.  Well Hilary and I aren't holding our breath about winning, but stay tuned, you can just never tell!

We then went on down the road to our next stop Hillcrest Vineyard owned by Susan and Dyson DeMara.  This is a family run Vineyard, which was apparent as soon as we got there.  Susan greeted us outside the tasting room and told us about the grapes that had just been picked.  I asked if I could take pictures and she invited us into the wine barrel storage area to watch her husband 'Dyson' bring in the large vats of grapes with his forklift to weigh them and get them ready to be processed.  She invited us into the tasting room and told us their history and we tasted several of the wines.

By then Hilary and I decided it was lunch time...Yep! We started wine tasting in the morning (it's 5 o'clock somewhere!).  When we were at Delfino, the gal told us about this little place not too far from the vineyard to have a great lunch.  It was called Lighthouse Center Bakery. I do have to say it was one of the best lunches I've ever had!!! They are a vegetarian establishment, but I didn't miss not having meat one little bit - the soup and sandwich I had were so savory and delicious!!!!

The next vineyard on our wine tour was Reustle - Prayer Rock Vineyards.  It is a beautiful amazing place obviously costing thousands of dollars to build and maintain, but it felt uncomfortable there for me.  Maybe a tad bit too 'high end', although the gal who took us on the tour and did our wine tasting was quite nice, but the feel of the place was .... pretentious.

                                           

Hilary and I continued on down the road and turned into this vineyard, which ended up being our favorite of the day and it was called TeSo'Aria.  It is also a family run vineyard owned by John Olson, a gregarious and charming man, who made us feel welcome the moment we walked into his tasting room!!! They were working feverishly when we got there, and he broke away to let us taste his wines and talk about his passion of grapes.

After getting gas in Hilary's rig, we jumped onto the freeway heading south to our final winery of the day.  At exit 119 - Winston, we pulled off heading west to Spangler Vineyards.  As we entered we were greeted by a female Akita dog and two puppies of her litter.  They were so cute and I had to pet them! One had longish fur and he was quite a beautiful pup!  The gal there was really sweet as well, and gave us a sampling of their wines.  All in all, we really enjoyed the wine tour, and it made me want to sample the Applegate valley wineries closer to home.

Ahhhhh....the 'fruits' of our labor.  We snagged these Quince off of a tree at the entrance/exit to John Olson's vineyard...Yes! We asked before 'poaching' them....probably the biggest Quince I've ever seen before! And these are the bottles of wine we purchased from each vineyard.