Inspiration: The Crucial Point of Comparison Between Wine Regions

Why My Move to the Willamette Valley has been a tremendous success (No disrespect intended, Napa Valley)

It is not difficult to compare different wine regions, either from the perspective of being a resident or visitor. I’ve lived in three such regions (Napa Valley, Sonoma Valley, and Willamette Valley) and I’ve visited numerous other “wine countries” that attract visitors. All of them are similar in one respect: They provide extraordinary opportunities to taste and encounter a huge diversity of wines that non-wine country regions do not.

What I’ve landed on, however, as the crucial point of comparison between wine regions, is how each provides a diversity of inspiration to the visitor or the resident.

I dwelled on this question of how to compare wine regions driving home from my birthday dinner in Dundee, Oregon—a centrally located town in the Northern Willamette Valley wine country. Our guest at the dinner, The Marvelous Ms. Elizabeth Schneider, had asked me, “Well, what do you think of Oregon?” It was a good question and appropriately timed given Kathy, Henry, and I are now embarking on our fourth year as residents here since transplanting from Napa Valley.

Elizabeth makes a good living asking the right questions and doling out excellent answers too. But I don’t think she got a good answer from me and this bothered me as we meandered home to Salem along Willamette Valley backroads. It bothered me.

My response to Elizabeth’s question referenced the different weather (grey v sunny) and our responses to it, the quality of the wines in Oregon vs Napa, the difference in geography (a narrow valley vs a sprawling valley), and the differences in the culinary options.

My response to Oregon and the Willamette Valley has been almost entirely positive. But not because the wines are fantastic. Not because I deal with grey skies just fine. Not because the region is sprawling.

What makes the Willamette Valley a far more compelling (wine) region than, say, Napa Valley, is that it provides me and anyone else that visits so many points from which inspiration can be acquired.

Inspiration can be gained from the wines one tastes in any given wine country. But this is what makes them all similar, not what sets the regions apart. What is remarkable about the Willamette Valley and what makes one stand back in awe is the consistent exposure to natural beauty even as one drives past not just wineries, but fields of hazelnuts, blueberries, grasses and more. One also is constantly taken by exposure to the passing of time in this place as one old home after another, now-abandoned red barns located in vast fields, crooked old signs advertising former villages all pass you by more frequently than entrances to winery estates.

I didn’t mention any of this to Elizabeth.

I should have told her that when I drive about the Willamette Valley and visit its different reaches I see so much more than what I see in Napa Valley, for instance. I see different pasts. I see different kinds of vistas. I see different ways of living. I see different kinds of secrets and different kinds of curiosities than when I drive up and down Highway 29 or the Silverado Trail in Napa Valley.

I should have told her I couldn’t have anticipated this before moving here and that this kind of difference would have such a positive impact on my state of mind and feeling of well-being—two of the most important considerations when comparing two places.

Part of what recommends one place over another must also be the potential for surprise; the approaching corner around which one doesn’t know what to expect. This kind of surprise is also part of what recommends a place like the Willamette Valley over a place like Napa Valley. It’s true that one can get off the two main Napa Valley byways and travel up the steep mountainsides. But many of these roads in Napa are now entryways to burned-out terrain due to multiple fires.

I’ve driven all over the Willamette Valley, particularly its northern parts. Surprise is constant, particularly when you veer off the main roads and travel aimlessly along the numerous smaller, backroads that are traced across the terrain. I can’t say this for Napa Valley. I can’t say about Napa Valley that if I turn the corner I might come across a honey producer, a small farmstand, a cider producer, a beautiful unvarnished barn built in the 1930s, a butcher, a stand of conifers that are home to trove of mushrooms, a crooked old home with a front yard bedecked in spinning pinwheels, a grove of Chrismas trees awaiting harvest, or a small winery producing world-beating Pinot Noir and Gamay. I just can’t say this about Napa Valley, but I could have mentioned this to Elizabeth when she asked, “How do you like Oregon”?

As an aside, I’ve been pretty vocal about my feelings concerning the food and dining scene in Salem, Oregon. I’m not impressed. However, on my birthday the food at Dundee Bistro was superb in every respect. This is not to say that the dining scene in the Willamette Valley is the equal of Napa. There are few places in the world that can rival the collection of great dining opportunities available in that Valley.

And yet it remains that when the crucial question of the inspiration of mind, body, and soul are considered, I can say unequivocally that what I think of my move to Oregon, Elizabeth, is that it has improved my life.