Choose your wineries based on the experience and food that each winery will offer for the Umpqua Valley Harvest Tour on September 21, 2024.
Elkton Wineries
Bradley Vineyards
Join us at Bradley Vineyards for an intimate and educational wine tasting experience. Take your wine glass from the tasting room deck to the vines where you will be given a detailed presentation about grape harvest. You’ll learn about the trellis system and vine spacing, vine vigor and nutrition, sugar content in grapes and get to taste and guess the brix of the fruit in the field. We’ll explain a full harvest day from staffing and equipment to trucking and logistics, and after the presentation, regroup on the deck for a delicious food pairing and the remaining tasting flight.
We’ll offer a few food pairings including Caesar salad lettuce wraps, BBQ pork sliders, and ice cream sandwiches. It will be a lovely late summer palate-pleasing adventure.
Haines Creek Vineyard
At Haines Creek Vineyard, you’ll have the unique opportunity to take a walk through the vineyard with the winemaker, observing different pruning methods, canopy management, and grape varieties as they approach peak ripeness and Harvest. Learn about grapevine growth and plant morphology, as you taste the berries in the field alongside the delicious wines we produce from them. Each variety, grape and wine produced from our vineyard is grown and made with a sense of place from vine to bottle, each year lending it’s own twist as no two growing seasons are the same. Come and let us share that story with you!
Fresh baguette is a staple at Haines Creek Vineyard, today paired with small bites to savor, accompanying each wine.
Knoll Vineyards
We will focus on the barrel room and how the wine is managed once it arrives there. We will talk about barrel management, types of barrels, levels of toast/oak in barrels and which wines are best aged in barrels. Guests will learn how a ‘thief’ is used to pull samples from wine barrels, how long to age wine is determined, cellar temperatures and humidity and we’ll discuss different activities in the barrel room (topping, racking, etc). A quick tour of the winery and crush pad will be included and guests are welcome to take a walk in the 30 acre vineyard. *This experience will be taking place at 1865 Schad Road in Elkton.
A grazing board or wood fired pizza.
River’s Edge Winery
Learn the process of winemaking firsthand at River’s Edge Winery. You’ll be led through a typical day of processing wine grapes by the owners of River’s Edge, touring the cellar and learning the importance of each piece of equipment while sampling our wines. Discover the entire process from beginning to end: receiving, destemming, pressing, and barreling down. Wineries often conjure romantic visions of sipping and swirling, but on your visit, you’ll learn about the hard work that goes into creating high-quality wine.
Enjoy several food pairings alongside your samples as you learn the process behind winemaking.
North-Central Wineries
Oakland Creek Vineyards
Oakland Creek Vineyards is one of the Umpqua Valley’s newest tasting rooms opening in August 2024. We have been through two harvest seasons and know that in addition to great grapes, it also takes great wine to get through the busy harvest season! Our tasting room is located in Historic Downtown Oakland in the historic E.G. Young Bank Building. Come see the old bank vault and relax in our charming vintage-inspired tasting room to learn the different aspects to consider when you are wine tasting.
A wine tasting doesn’t seem complete without pairing great snacks. We’ll pair the wine tasting with a delicious cheese and charcuterie plate, olives, nuts, and crackers.
Reustle-Prayer Rock Vineyards
Join us in our winery & educational vineyard where you’ll enjoy a taste of our estate grown wine while learning about the essential stages of viticulture, from vine to wine. You’ll learn how sugar levels are meticulously measured, the interplay between acid and ripeness and understanding their crucial role in determining the perfect picking time for our grapes. Taste different grapes and compare the fruit and leaves of multiple varieties grown in our educational vineyard.
Stroll through our caves and enjoy bite-sized food appetizers tailored to each of our estate grown wines.
Spire Mountain Cellars
At Spire Mountain Cellars we make wine in the Vineyard, and do our best not to mess it up in the winery. We are a “Vintage True” winery, making sure to allow the uniqueness of our site to shine through the bottle your pouring. Come visit us and learn some of our techniques that lead to distinct wines. We’ll start and finish in the tasting room with a short walk through the vines.
We are offering individual charcuterie plates to enjoy while you take in the view from our tasting room.
Triple Oak Vineyard
Come enjoy a rare opportunity to walk through Triple Oak’s micro-vineyard, hidden within an Oak Woodland. See how we produce wines that embody our commitment to sustainable practices and the preservation of woodland birds and animals. You will test for ripeness and learn when to pick each variety, squeeze or stomp some grapes and taste the fresh juice. You will learn how we are mirroring natural methods used 8,000 years ago to make Amber (Orange) wines. You will learn how it differs from Rose’ and taste limited edition Rose’ and Amber wines and red wines from our Wines of a Thousand Vines collection.
We will have foods made from our vineyard and garden, and paired with our wines. In addition to tasting fresh wine grapes you will enjoy Dolmadas made from our grape leaves, Verjus from unripe grapes, wine grape jelly with cheese, and sliders with Pinot Noir BBQ sauce.
*This experience will be taking place at Triple Oak Vineyard, at 1305 Oak Street, just a few blocks from our tasting room. Follow signs and balloons from tasting room to vineyard.
South-Central Wineries
Abacela Winery
Join us outdoors on our picturesque property and renowned scientific vineyard. Enjoy a tasting of our estate-produced wine while exploring the fundamental stages of viticulture, from grape to glass. Learn about the precise measurement of sugar levels, the balance between acidity and ripeness, and how these factors determine the ideal harvesting time for our grapes. Discover various grape varieties and compare the characteristics of the fruit from the diverse plantings on our expansive 78-acre vineyard estate.
Enjoy a twist on our traditional Spanish tapas, featuring locally sourced delights from Brosi Sugar Tree Farms.
Cooper Ridge Vineyards
Join us at Cooper Ridge Vineyard for an exclusive exploration into the art of making port wines. Our winemaker, Dustin Smith, will guide you through the aging process inside our winery, explaining the unique grapes and barrels we use. During these engaging sessions, you’ll have the chance to sample both our white and red ports currently aging and bottled. You will have the opportunity for a little Q&A all the while we experience these unique barrel tastings. Enjoy special food pairings from local artisans that perfectly complement the port wines we will be sharing with you during this one-time event. Don’t miss this unique opportunity to deepen your understanding of port wine at Cooper Ridge Vineyard and experience the beautiful views of the Umpqua Valley!
Savor the flavors of the salty and sweet specialty small bite pairings being served during this intimate educational port tasting setting.
JosephJane Winery
At JosephJane Winery, we will take you to our crush pad, the building located on the west side of the winery and walk you through our fermenting process and why fermentation is so important. We will show you how to check temperature, brix, and do punch downs on our grapes. We’ll also discuss what happens when fermentations “get stuck.”
JosephJane Winery certainly screams wood fired pizza and a glass of crisp white wine in your hand, however there’s a whole world of winemaking just beyond that pizza oven you don’t want to miss learning about!
We’ll have “small bite” wood fired pizza paired with specific wines for your enjoyment.
Knostman Family Winery
At Knostman Family Winery you will sample our Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc grapes to see if they are ready to harvest. Meet us in the vineyard where you’ll enjoy a splash of each of these wines while we talk about the vineyard and what we are looking for in the grapes. You will taste, pick, and smash the grapes using the juice to check the pH, Brix (sugar), and acidity. It’s sticky and fun! Then we will discuss what these numbers mean to the final wine. The most important decision you will ever make is when to pick the grapes. This is the best time to be in the vineyard and it will help you connect the dots from grape to glass.
We’ll have different small bites for you to enjoy, specifically paired with the wines from the grapes you picked today and two other wines. Enjoy delicious cheese, charcuterie, and fresh seasonal fruit that have been perfectly paired to delight your senses.
Melrose Vineyards
We will have our harvester and picking equipment on display at our upper block vineyard, to show you how they work. We will introduce the various methods of harvest, and how/why they each work for different vineyards. If all goes well, we will harvest some grapes from the vines. We will make introductions to our farmer, Wayne Parker, and our vineyard crew manager, Louis Vincencio.
Paul O’Brien Winery
Join us in our cellar to learn the essence of red wine fermentation. You will physically take part in our daily routine of checking brix and temp as well as pumping over while learning the importance of managing fermentation lead by our head winemaker.
After you work up an appetite we will serve you a delicious authentic “cellar lunch”
Spangler Vineyards
We will explore the aging of wine in barrels–different types, different ages–to examine how wine matures with time. We will sample our Cab Franc in barrel from 2023, 2022, 2021 (bottled recently), and 2020 (our current release).
As a perfect pairing with Cab Franc, we will be serving smoked sliced Tri-tip with grilled asparagus.
*We will be in the barrel room where it is only 60 degrees, so please dress accordingly.
Whitetail Ridge
All visitors will be offered a choice of red or white wines to sample as I take them through our harvest/processing system. Participants will be able to see and touch our harvest pressing and processing system. I will walk them through how grapes are processed and how I use different yeasts to acquire and emphasize different character in our fruit. The final part of our visit will include barrel samples of our aged Port offerings in various stages of aging and a discussion of how the wines are changing as they age in barrel.
Each participant will be offered our fresh organic goat cheese, meat selections, and gourmet bread & crackers (including gluten free) to make their own custom bite. To finish the tasting experience will be either our aged white or red Port, paired with locally made custom candy prepared just for our Ports.