Newport Seafood and Wine Festival

According to the Newport Chamber of Commerce, it just wouldn’t be winter on the Oregon coast without the Newport Seafood and Wine Festival. Held the last weekend of February every year, this festival brings together a wide range of northwest wineries, food vendors and craft vendors for a giant weekend party. The festival is held in a huge tent in a parking lot near the Rogue Brewing Co. and the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

This is our third year attending the festival, and I think we finally have the routine down. We drove in on Friday, checked into our motel and took the shuttle bus to the festival. We bought e-tickets in advance this year, and it is the best way to go. They charge you that annoying “convenience fee” (it wasn’t convenient for me!) but the 3 day package was still cheaper than buying tickets at the door for all 3 days. The best part is that e-ticket holders get a separate entrance with a much shorter line. We’ll do that again next year. We stayed at the festival until around 6 or 7, and took the drunk bus (I mean shuttle) back to the motel. This year we stayed at The Waves of Newport near Nye Beach. It was the most expensive place we’ve yet stayed during the festival, but the location was perfect. Plus, it wasn’t that much more expensive than the other motels that all seem to jack the price up for wine festival weekend. Back to the location – it’s near the beginning of the shuttle route, so there’s still plenty of room on the bus when it arrives to pick you up. Also, it’s within easy walking distance of the Nye Beach shopping district, so for dinner on Friday, we walked down to see what we could find. We ended up at Nana’s Irish Pub – not much to look at from the outside, but real energy when we walked in. It was crowded, mostly with people our age, but we were able to get a table right away. If you want comfort food, this is the place. Rachel had a rustic chicken pot pie, and I had shepherd’s pie with a chunky mashed potato topping. Although we’d been tasting wine all afternoon, we were in an Irish pub, so I had to have a pint (imperial of course) of Guinness. Rachel thought I was crazy, and of course she was right. Good thing we were walking back to the motel! By the way, if you’re wondering how authentic an Irish pub in Newport Oregon can be, it’s owned and run by the mother-daughter team of Philomena O'Brien and Tara Coughlan. That’s Irish!

Saturdays at this wine festival are legendary. We found this out the hard way our first year. This is when all the 20-somethings decide to get completely smashed and party, party, party. Both this year and last, we discovered that we can get 2 or 3 good hours of tasting in during the morning and then head over to the Rogue Brewing Co. restaurant for lunch. If we found any wine in the morning that we want to buy, we whip back through right after lunch and then get out! If you taste a wine you like, it’s best to buy it that day. Many of the wineries have sold out of some wines by the last day of the festival. And in case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t have a beer with lunch, even though Rogue makes some mean stout. I also had my spit cup with me at the festival on both Saturday and Sunday, so I was in very good shape. After lunch and a quick run through the festival to buy wine, we went back to the motel for a relaxing afternoon.

We had dinner reservations at the Bay House in Lincoln City on Saturday night. We thought we had left plenty of time to drive from Newport, but as soon as we got in the car, Lee (our GPS) already indicated that we were going to be late. I hate being late anywhere, and it put me in a slightly foul mood. Fortunately, when we were about half way there, we realized that Lee’s arrival time couldn’t possibly be right. It turns out that Lee really had no idea where the restaurant was, and had placed it about 5 miles further into Lincoln City than it really was. We arrived in plenty of time. We had a wonderful time at the restaurant. Our waiter was a Rhone wine fan, and we ended up ordering a very nice Vacqueyras with dinner. It was earthy and slightly spicy and opened up nicely as the meal progressed. The food was very good, but not excellent. The crab cake appetizer was great, although I could have used more of the aioli, and we had a wonderful hearts of Romaine salad with terrific fried polenta croutons. I had originally planned to order lamb, but they had just run out, so Rachel and I both ordered filet mignon. While the flavor was very nice, the texture was somewhat spongy. We of course ordered desert and I had a small glass of port to finish off the evening.

Sunday is my favorite day at the festival. All the crazy 20-somethings had hangovers from the night before, so most of the attendees on Sunday morning had gray hair. We felt right at home. It’s also much less crowded and you get more of a chance to talk with the folks in the booths. After about 2 hours of tasting, we had both had enough; my palate was tired. Rather than taking the shuttle bus, we drove to the festival on Sunday. There was plenty of free parking along the side of the road near the festival, and we could just walk out to our car and take off when we were done. Using a combination of Rachel’s food instincts and Google on the iPhone, we stopped for lunch at a place called Tidal Raves just north of Depoe Bay. The food was OK, but the view was spectacular. The restaurant is perched on a cliff above a very rocky bowl-shaped inlet and one entire wall is glass. We watched the waves come in and crash against the cliff throughout the meal. It ended up being exactly what we wanted – a place to sit down and get decent food fairly quickly.

Tasting Notes:

12 Ranch: Good Syrah and Cab.

Abacela: A good Albarino this year (better than last). Nothing else, including the Tempranillo was great.

Abiqua: Very nice slightly sweet Muscat.

Amity: They were awarded a gold medal for their ’06 Pinot. We thought it had a good, earthy nose, but was somewhat thin with a mildly unpleasant finish.

Anthony Dell: We tasted through their wines again and really were not impressed. The Syrah was OK, and the Del Rio red was pretty good, but nothing worth buying.

Capitello: Another local winery that we’ve tried many times. The Sauvignon Blanc was good (better than the previous vintage) and they had a wonderful Brut. If we needed a Brut, I would get this one.

Cathedral Ridge: They had pretty good reds, but nothing to knock your socks off.

Chateau Lorane: While we bought a lot of their Tempranillo, Foch, and Baco last year, nothing really floated our boat this time.

Cliff Creek: Another of our favorite wineries specializing in big reds. Had previously tasted and bought the Claret and Merlot, so we just tasted and bought the Syrah this time.

Coelho: Good Petit Sirah.

Cooper Mountain: Mediocre Malbec.

Crater Lake: We had tried their wine a year ago in Portland and liked it. They have a number of very good reds. The Syrah was good. We liked and bought the Merlot 29 and Recito-style Merlot.

David Hill: Given that they are about a 3 minute drive up the hill from our house, we had already tasted all of the wine they brought to the festival. But it was fun, as always, to have a chat with winemaker Jason Bull and Will Kobyluck, David Hill’s sales and marketing director.

Eola Hills: Good Sangiovese and Merlot, but fairly forgettable Cab and Petit Sirah.

Girardet: Always fun to visit. Had a brief chat with Philippe Girardet, and he’s quite a character. He assured us that drinking wine will give us long lives. The ’07 Baco was not so good, and the Baco reserve was better, but not as good as our Chateau Lorane Baco. They had a nice, smooth, easy drinking Cab.

Hillcrest: It’s always fun to be warmly greeted by Dyson DeMara, and he welcomed us as old friends again. We re-tasted several of his wines that we already had, and of course still loved them. He also had an ’04 Chard that was just wonderful – yeasty like warm bread. Bought 2 bottles.

Hood River Winery: We’ve enjoyed their Marionberry fruit wine in the past. This year it was just too sweet. Did the wine change or did our palates? They did have a nice fruity Sangiovese which we bought.

King’s Raven: Very good Foch.

Melrose: Very good Baco Noir. Their Equinox blend was OK, and the other reds were just so-so.

Misty Oaks: Good Pinot Gris and Cab Franc.

Orchard Heights: They had a good Cab, but everything else was so-so.

Palotai: They have that strange Bull’s Blood wine that we had with lamb sausage at Greatest of the Grape. Didn’t try it this time, but they had a pretty good Meritage blend as well as a nice white blend called Bella Bianca which we bought.

Paschal: I can’t remember if we’d tried them before, but they had some pretty nice reds. A decent Syrah, and a very good Sangiovese-Dulcetto blend (which we bought).

Purple Cow: Another winery we know very well, so we didn’t taste anything at the festival. I’ve been fortunate to help out at the vineyard and winery during harvest, bottling, and other activities. Jon and Galo make some great wine, and it was great to briefly chat with them, as well as with Briana and Matt.

Ribera: Very good ’05 Pinot Noir, and a good Merlot.

River’s Edge: Good barrel select Pinot Noir, but not as good as David Hill.

Saginaw: Pretty decent Marshall Foch.

Sienna Ridge: Good Pinot Blanc. Everything else was OK.

Snoqualmie: Decent Cab and Merlot.

Sol et Soleil: The ’07 vintage of their Pinot Gris is as good as we remember the ’06. Very crisp and slightly sweet. We got 2 more bottles.

Spangler: Several fairly forgettable reds. We once liked one of their Pinots.

Spindrift: Decent Pinot Noirs – fairly simple and earthy. Really nice Syrah which we bought.

Spring Hill: This is a nice family winery with a fairly quiet winemaker and his more sociable wife. Good Pinot Noirs with an exceptional reserve bottling called Mer Vin. We bought 2 bottles.

Sweet Cheeks: We were not that impressed with their wine when we tasted it about a year ago, but this time they had a fantastic Riesling which we bought – spritzy, low alcohol and slightly sweet.

Terra Vina: Lots of big reds. Good Sangiovese, Malbec, and Cab Franc. We bought a bottle of the Cab Franc.

Troon: This was a bit of a surprise, as we have tried their Druid’s Fluid in the past and not been impressed. However, they also have an upper tier collection, and these were pretty good. They had a very nice Zin (not as good as Mazzocco), and a good Meritage. Their Cab was quite good – nice acid and would go well with food. A fun sweet wine called Jeannie in a Bottle would go great with chocolate chip cookies. We bought a bottle.

Valley View: Very good Merlot and Syrah. We bought both.

Vitis Ridge: We’ve enjoyed their Foch in the past, and this vintage is good, but not enough to push us to buy it. They also had an excellent Riesling that we did buy.

Volcano Vineyards: A winery in the Bend area, they had a good collection of big reds, but none were exceptional.

Wild Rose: A large collection of red wines, but all were rather thin.

Zerba: Usually a reliable producer of big reds, we were disappointed in the ’06s.