Wine Tasting

Nick, Alice, and I did not get as early of a start as we had hoped this morning. Alice is still recovering from a cold, and Nick is still recovering from his finals this week. I got up and went for a long walk/run this morning. I pretty much wandered the streets around where Nick and Alice live. It is a neat area and easy to get around in because the streets in one directions are numbered ( 20th, 21t, 22nd, etc) and the streets in the other direction are in alphabetical order (Hoyt, Irving, Johnson , etc). So, I can wander all I want and not really get lost. We headed out a little before noon for the Dundee Hills for wine tasting. Alice drove as she was taking cold medicine and didn’t want to drink. We visited Sokol Blosser first, which is not a winery we typically would have stopped at (we all like the smaller, more family-oriented wineries), but I love their Evolution blend wine and really wanted to go. The tasting room was crazy, but we did get to taste a couple of excellent wines and I purchased a bottle of the Evolution #12 to enjoy later.

We then continued down the road to Methven Family Winery – which was smaller, and we were the only ones there during our tasting. This was quite a contrast to SB which was packed. We again tried some wonderful wines and our pourer was a hilarious guy who kept us laughing the whole time. I love wine tasting in Oregon because they tend to have a good mix of white and red wines. I really only like white wines while Alice and Nick (and most other people) are partial to red wine. It makes tasting more fun for everyone. Methven has a winery cat (as opposed to a farm cat) who enjoyed visiting us.

We then visited one final winery whose name I cannot remember. This winery offered some very interesting wines including a Tempranilla Rose' that was very good. All three of us liked it and Alice and Nick ended up purchasing a bottle. We then took the recommendation of one of the guys at that winery and headed to DaVinci’s in Salem. DaVinci’s turned out to be a great recommendation – Italian food, but not traditional Italian. I had a seafood fettuccini that was wonderful (with shrimp and scallops), Nick enjoyed a pasta with sausage dish and Alice enjoyed a stuffed pork. We shared an appetizer of blue cheese scallops with pears that was incredible! The nice part about the restaurant is that they offered two different sizes of meals so Alice and I could get the smaller one that was more suited for us. All three dishes were incredible and I would add DaVinci’s to my list to visit again.

Nick and I were both in desperate need of haircuts so we decided to head to Alice’s salon to get that taken care of. I really wanted my hair shorter and darker and I totally trust Alice to take that explanation and do a good job. And she did a great job. My hair is now just below my shoulders and not as dark as I pictured it, but I think it was good that I did not do a drastic change – a gradual change will be better. And it is super easy to style and will dry much more quickly than my long hair! Before we got our hair cut, Nick and I walked down the street to grab some hot tea from a cute pastry place that just opened. As Nick tried to hand me my tea it tipped and he ended up burning his hand. It didn’t look that bad in the beginning, but got redder and more irritated as the night wore on.