Wineries and Weirdness

(It’s nearly 7PM as I’m putting this blog entry online. The sun is high enough in the sky that it seems like late afternoon. Portland has very long days in the summer and apparently very short ones in the winter)

Thursday we made our long expedition down to the wine region. It took us about 45 minutes to get there --- everything really is nearby!

We spent the next 4 hours enjoying local wines, Pinot Noir mostly. And eating a very pleasant picnic lunch that Maxine put together from the farmer’s market. The views at the wineries were bucolic: rolling hills, rows of vines, red clover fields and trees. But, at the end of the day, we’d concluded that, as much as we enjoy a day of wine tasting at the source, we don’t like Pinot as much as other red wine varietals.

Later that day, after stopping home for a few hours, we started an exploration of Portland’s Northeast side. We began at something called “Alberta Last Thursday” (http://www.blogger.com/Documents%20and%20Settings/Tom%20Morris/Local%20Settings/Temporary%20Internet%20Files/Content.IE5/GXDE1ELI/artonalberta.org/last_thursday.html). The last Thursday of every month during the summer, about a dozen art galleries stretched across a 15 block range (on Alberta Street) opened up in the evening, or so we’d read. So, we were a bit puzzled when we got there to find the streets, even side streets, closed off and parking difficult 2 blocks away. After parking, we walked over to Alberta Street for one of the most amazing open air street parties we’ve ever seen. Guys on stilts leading marching bands. Crowds of hundreds following the band. Guys doing Brazilian judo in the streets in time to music. Performance artists dressed in orange bodysuits. People dressed only in their bathrobes. People selling things they’d made. Portable restaurants. Dogs. Thousands of people walking on the sidewalks and in the streets. This party was as good as the ones they hold to celebrate sunset at Mallory Square in Key West, or Mardi Gras in New Orleans. We were so sorry that we didn’t bring the camera with us to take pictures.

There’s a saying here (of course, you can buy the bumper sticker) “Keep Portland weird.” This event honors that goal.

Oh yeah, we figure that we were in the oldest 10% of the people there.

P.S. The wineries we visited earlier in the day, all of whom served good wine, were:
1. Penner-Ash http://www.pennerash.com/
2. WillaKenzie http://www.willakenzie.com/
3. Anne Amie http://www.anneamie.com/
4. Domaine Drouhin http://www.domainedrouhin.com/en/index.php?contentVersion=7
5. Sokol Blosser http://www.sokolblosser.com/

Thanks to Jen for the recommendations!