Oregon Beer

My trip to Oregon was initially about wine, but segued into a beer journey. That isn't too surprising: Oregon is one of the great states for craft beer, and visitors travel from across the US for the beer alone. The beer scene is extraordinary; spread around the state, it's concentrated in the major city of Portland and the smaller, remote, and very beautiful town of Bend. Beer here is treated with a fanatical fervour, its quality debated heatedly in bars and breweries.

ninkasi, eugene

I'd only tried one beer from Ninkasi before, Total Domination, a widely-available IPA I had found a little too sweetly aggressive. Nevertheless, while in Eugene I wanted to visit the ten-year-old brewery to see what else they had to offer. I'm glad I did. They have a small, intimate, and very friendly tasting bar, with ten beers on tap. Visiting a brewery or its tasting room offers the opportunity to taste beers that aren't distributed, and here I was able to taste two newly released beers. Their winter ale was brown, malty, and nutty, perfect for the rainy weather. The Megalodom was something else. Based on Total Domination (which the barmaid admitted was her least favourite of Ninkasi's beers), it's a whopping 10% ABV and dangerously drinkable. Such a beer encapsulates the trend of West Coast IPAs: extremely well made, highly alcoholic, fruity and hoppy, big but balanced, and not for the faint-hearted.

grain station brew works, mcminnville

Portlandia is a TV comedy which lampoons the touchy-feely habits of those who live in Portland. The first episode features a couple who won't order the chicken in a restaurant until they've visited the farm where the chicken was raised to establish that it was treated properly. I experienced a similar moment in McMinnville, a small town in the heart of Willamette Valley and Pinot Noir country. "Are your fries gluten free?" I heard a young girl behind me ask. The waiter responded, "All of our ingredients are gluten free, but I can't guarantee there isn't gluten in the environment." Thus ensued a half-hour debate, interspersed with the waiter going back and forth from the kitchen to check the gluten status of each product on the menu. "The fries are briefly cooked in sunflower oil, but we can't determine if that results in some gluten in the fries."

This was at Grain Station Brew Works, a brewpub located in an old timber barn and which I stopped off at for lunch to avoid the pouring rain. I had two beers: the Bet the Farm IPA, which was excellent, malty, fruity, and not too hoppy. I then ordered the RyePA, a request which prompted the waiter to ask me if I was sure I wanted it. The Oregonians can be a little too concerned with the customers' happiness, as it was a good, spicy rye IPA.

cascade, portland

A drinker from Florida sat next to me at the bar declared that he was "in heaven." He couldn't believe that a brewery was devoted to making so many sours. These are Belgian-inspired beers that small breweries like Cascade have taken to extremes, merging wine-making techniques with beer-making practices. Cascade have been doing this for so long that they can almost exclusively focus on aged beers. I tried two vintages of their Sang Rouge, a red ale aged in old oak barrels of different sizes. Ageing beer in wine and whisky casks is becoming common across the country, but doing it well is very difficult. The 2013 was fruity, sour, and still a little closed; the 2009 was tannic and leathery, with aromas of dried fruits and mushrooms, and as close to wine as beer will, for better or worse, ever get. Cascade are probably the best producers of sour beers in the States and their beers, although expensive, are well worth seeking out.

deschutes, bend

I drink a lot of Deschutes, mainly their Fresh Squeezed IPA, a green, hoppy, herbaceous summer beer that's now their best seller - overtaking Mirror Pond Pale Ale, another very drinkable beer. They're based in Bend, a town that's next to spectacular forests and far from anywhere. They started in 1988, beginning a trend that's led to Bend becoming one of the most beer-centric towns I've ever visited, with at least fifteen breweries in a town of 80,000 people. The Deschutes bar/restaurant was heaving when I visited, yet the two barmen were able to serve beer tourists like me while entertaining locals. The Bachelors' Bitter was as good an English-style beer as I've tried in the US (the other contender is Blue Bell Bitter by Magnolia in San Francisco).

boneyard, bend

This is quite a different operation, located in a reconstituted garage full of old car and garage parts (hence the name boneyard). It's down to earth, with full-on tattoo-style artwork, and still very low-key. The beers aren't bottled, and the tasting room only pours them by the 28ml (1oz) serving - though you can have as many as you like for $1 a pour. The IPAs are as magnificent and as full-on as the artwork. The RPM IPA is their best-known beer, distributed throughout Oregon, but Incredible Pulp was perhaps the best of those I tried: briefly infused in blood oranges, it's subtle, balanced, yet orange and intense. Boneyard encapsulate the Oregon - and by extension West Coast - beer scene: no frills but an intense concentration on quality and innovation.

The Oregon that isn't Pinot Noir

Oregon is a young wine region, dating back to the 1960s. In that short time, it's become defined by Pinot Noir. The grape accounts for over 60% of plantings, mainly in the long, narrow Willamette Valley that stretches south of Portland. Given the high quality of its Pinot Noir, it's no wonder that the association between Oregon and Pinot is so strong. But Oregon is a large state, sharing some of its AVAs with neighbouring Washington and Idaho in desert-like conditions in contrast to the rainy Willamette Valley. And then there's Southern Oregon, just north from California, with a continental climate not dissimilar from the northern Rhône.

I decided to make the drive up from Napa to find out about the wines being made in Southern Oregon, without quite realising the terrain one has to cover. After hours of driving straight along the flat I-5, the highway rises into the Cascades, a mountain range with active volcanoes that stretches all the way to Washington. It's beautiful, but snow was falling heavily with temperatures dropping to -3˚C in the middle of the afternoon.

Once across the border, the highway falls quickly down into valleys where snow was still drifting down on vines planted in obscure corners far away from any major city. The hills are beautiful, covered with trees and snow; the valleys remote, with wineries hidden away. This is the US at its quirkiest and most local.

Rogue Valley

The first thing to be said about Rogue Valley is that it has a great name. The second thing is that it's a dramatically beautiful region, surrounded by snowy hillsides covered in evergreens (logging has been Oregon's main industry since the nineteenth century). It's a popular tourist destination, not so much for its wine as for its Shakespeare festival. Nevertheless, it's quite remote and the wineries are scattered far apart in the countryside, especially in the Applegate Valley sub-region.

Many fruits are grown here, and grape vines are still a recent addition to the landscape and economy. But although few people outside of Oregon know about the wines from the area, the wineries have already established a reputation with tourists as well as locals. Some focus is needed, on how to promote the industry as well as which grape varieties work best.

Despite the snow during my visit, apparently anything can grow here in the dry summers, even Petit Verdot. The best wines are from Rhône varieties, both black and white, where there's a fresh acidity to complement the ripe fruits and full body. But this is a young wine region still learning about what works and what doesn't: there's also good Merlot and the Gewürztraminer I tried from Wooldridge was as good an example of that difficult grape variety as I've had in some time.

Umpqua Valley

A couple of hours further north is Umpqua Valley, another region with a great name. Despite being further north, it's a bit warmer than Rogue Valley (it wasn't snowing for a start, just raining), with a climate more Spanish than French. The main draw for my visit was Abacela, a winery established in 1995 by a dermatologist from Florida. His love for Spanish wine caused him to ask why no one in the US made wine from Tempranillo as good as that found in Spain (a fact which largely still holds true across the US and the rest of the world). With the help of his son, a climatologist, they spent three years looking for the perfect site within the US for Tempranillo.

Tempranillo is a tricky grape: it ripens early so needs a difficult climate to make it ripen more slowly. In Rioja, Tempranillo is grown at altitude with a maritime influence, while in Ribera del Duero it can be grown at 850m elevation to escape the hot temperatures. The choice of a site in Umpqua Valley was an inspired one: a continental climate with varied aspect, elevation, and temperature where Tempranillo gets rich, ripe aromas without ripening too quickly.

Abacela's Barrel Reserve Tempranillo 2013 is an extraordinary wine. It has the concentration and structure of Ribero del Duero, without the aggressive tannins, and is easily the best Tempranillo I have tasted from outside Spain. It makes clear how important site selection is for Tempranillo: you can't just plant it for the sake of it. Abacela also make very good Albariño and Garnacha, making Umpqua Valley a little piece of Spain.

It's hard to imagine the small wineries of Southern Oregon making enough of an impact to dislodge perceptions of Oregon as a Pinot Noir state: to do so will take a long, long time. But there's some really good wine being made there, at very affordable prices. It may not be an easy region to get to, but the beautiful landscape and the wine are worth the effort.