A Taste of Oregon

To tease ourselves as we lead up to the vacation we have planned for mid-July, Jarrett and I attended the Tuesday Night Wine Tasting at Murphy's in Virginia-Highland (or as we like to fondly refer to it around here, The Highlands), placed perfectly at the intersection of Virgina and Highland Avenues. In fact, their catch phrase is the very clever "where Virgina Highland meets. This is another one of Atlanta's best restaurants, in my opinion -- a comfortable setting and consistently good food and service. But back to the wine tasting -- we tasted eight different Oregon wines, though only two of them were Pinot Noir, the varietal Oregon is most known for (and my favorite), so the tasting ended up being a slight disappointment, but we tried to look on the bright side and enjoy the whites that people often don't realize Oregon offers. Here is the list of what we tried:

2005 Montinore Riesling

2005 Ponzi Pinot Gris

2005 Benton-Lane Pinot Gris

2005 Elk Cove Pinot Blanc

2005 Willakenzie Pinot Blanc

2005 Patricia Green Chardonnay

2004 Spruce Goose Pinot Noir

2005 Benton-Lane Pinot Noir

The Elk Cove Pinot Blanc was probably the best out of the eight -- I also liked the Chardonnay, as it tasted nothing like your typical Chard. All of the whites were aged in steel rather than oak barrels, which gives them more of that crisp, bright taste, usually with apple, pear, and/or berry notes. I didn't think I liked white wine until I had some of these steely whites and, of course, Sauvignon Blanc. Anyway, the tasting made for a nice evening -- and the best part of it is that if you stay for dinner, you get $5 off any entree over $11, so we also enjoyed a nice meal. I'm now looking even more forward to our tour of wineries in Oregon.

We're leaving around 10:00 this morning to go backpacking with some friends from our church (Seth, Jill, and Brent), as well as Seth and Jill's dog, Ellie, and Merckx. I'm sure the dogs will make it all the more interesting. This time I really will get a picture of Merckx in his little blue backpack. It's all loaded and ready to go. I just wonder what he'll think about carrying his own food -- I can just see him turning in circles trying to get to that good smelling stuff on his back. Heh. Anyway, we're headed to the Cohutta Wilderness, which consists of 40,000 acres that spill over the Georgia/Tennessee line (the Tennessee portion is known as the Big Frog Wilderness Area... cute). Around 1900, the Cohutta Mountains became one of the last areas of Georgia to be forested. Logging continued in these areas until World War II when the federal government took over management of the land. In 1976, 36,000 acres were deemed wilderness. Since that time more wilderness area has been added. The area is supposed to be beautiful, so I'm looking forward to experiencing it. However, it's going to be cold -- I mean freakin' cold -- so send warm thoughts our way.