Let’s face it. There are a lot of good places to have dinner while visiting Oregon Wine Country. You really need to know someone, which, if you stop and think about it, you do. She’s our concierge, Nicci Stokes. She will help you plan your trip. But she’s gone a step further. She’s already planned the perfect three-day week-end.

You can download a PDF copy of Romantic Week-end Getaway in Oregon Wine Country. She prepared the itinerary over in Yahoo Travel where you can customize it if you like. Just click here to go there. To customize it, you will click the “Copy Trip” items, and yes, you will need a Yahoo account. But it’s free, so go ahead. You can add or delete items from your itinerary, or if the choices Yahoo offers for items to add are not what you want, just click on “Create Item,” and then add it to your itinerary.

You will enjoy dinners at the Joel Palmer House, Nick’s Italian and Tina’s. For lunches have recommend the Crescent Cafe and The Horse Radish. And of course on Saturday, you’re scheduled for a winery tour in our very own All Events Limo.

On Saturday of your romantic getaway, we have you scheduled for a tour of some of Oregon’s great wineries. Our slogan, as always: You drink. We drive.

Jamie Goode is a London-based winewriter.  He currently writes The Sunday Express, the national newspaper in the UK.  You can catch Jamie Goode’s full credits here.

After attending the International Pinot Noir Celebration, just concluded in McMinnville on July 25, he has started a tour of Oregon Wine Country.  Just as soon as I get another minute, I will add some of his stops to my “Oregon Wine Country and Willamette Valley Vacation Planner Map”

But for now, you can follow his travels.  Check out Day 1 of Jamie Goode’s Tour of Oregon Wine Country.

A couple of weeks ago, I posted a map of the medal winners of San Francisco International Wine Competition. Ten area wineries were among the winners.

Because there are so many ways to enjoy a vacation in Oregon Wine Country, I decided to expand the scope of the map and produce the “Oregon Wine Country and Willamette Valley Vacation Planner Map.” I will be updating it frequently.

For now, here are the pushpins I used and what they mean.

Best Place to Stay in Oregon Wine Country

 Medal Winner in San Francisco International Wine Competition

Attraction worth at least a half day.  You miss the boat if you miss these.

When you visit the Willamette Valley, you naturally want take a wine country tour of several of the 75 or so vineyards in this part of heaven.  I’m going to assume for the moment that you like fine wine but perhaps don’t know enough to talk about it “properly.”

Suggestion:  Download and print a glossary of wine terms.  Then taste some of the spectacular Oregon wines, you can begin to make comments like:

“I loved the lingering aftertaste.”

Or you could say, “That was an atractive wine.”  According to our glossary that is “a slight put down for expensive wines, a slight compliment for o thers.” 

The glossary will further advise you on the proper sequence of communicating your perceptions.

a) Colour/clarity of the wine when the wineglass is tilted and its contents viewed against a light source.

b) Smell - (known in the general sense as the “nose”).

c)  Taste - (first in the “mouth” or “palate”, followed by the “finish”)

Our limo service, All Events Limo, always has a copy of this glossary.  By matching the terms in it with the wines you taste, you will return home not only relaxed but enlightened to the point you can show tell your friends a thing or two about wine tasting.

Cerainly one of the best, if not the best, photographer in these parts is Janis Miglavs.  He took the exterior shots of the Kelty as well as many of the interior shots you see on our site.

I just found his blog where he exhibits some of his photographs and describes a behind-the-scenes look at photography, wineries, and vineyards.  His recent set of posts deals with this spectacular country we call home.  And no, you don’t have to come here to see his photographs.  But warning, when you see the beaty he saw through his lens, you will be firing up your car or booking air.

In a word: spectacular.

And by the way, I thoroughly enjoyed his essays about wine and photography. The man can also express himself in words.

With this post, I’m starting re-naming my series on things to do in Oregon WIne Country.  There are undoubtedly hundreds of things that can draw you to our part of the world.  Beginning with this post, I’m going to start numbering them. As you might imagine there are five others. They are all in the “What To Do” category.  So stay tuned for more.

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A scant 10.1 miles from the Kelty Estate Bed and Breakfast, you will find the 99W Drive-In Theatre. There’s not a lot of drive-ins left, giving you still one more in a very long list of reasons to visit Oregon Wine Country and stay, naturally, at the Kelty. They are open Friday, Saturday and Sunday night.

For current showtimes, features and a map, visit the 99W Drive-in Website.

There is always something to do in Oregon Wine County. Pick a week-end, and the Concierge here at the Kelty will recommend places to go, wineries to visit, where to eat. Heck, with our All Events Limo service, we’ll even take you there. But sometimes the choices are just staggering. Take July. Of course the 24^th to 28^th is the International Pinot Noir Celebration. Can’t get tickets to that? Check out the week before. Check our availability here.

Saturday, July 19: Motor on over to the Sokol Blosser Winery in Dundee (5.1 miles from the Kelty which is, of course in the heart of the heart of Oregon Wine Country.) From 12:00 to 4:00, enjoy their “Inaugural Grape & Grill BBQ.” Your cost: $0.00. Get complete details here.

Saturday, July 19. This could be quite a day. After your BBQ in the afternoon at Sokol Blosser, by all means attend an awesome evening at Stoller Vineyards.  Bill and Cathy Stoller are hosting “Starry Night” an evening of dinner and dancing under the stars—all to benefit the McMinnville Education Foundation. Tickets are $85 per person. You will enjoy a traditional Northwest Salmon Bake as well as dancing and an auction.  For info call Maria Stuart at 503-472-6990 or visit the Foundation’s website at www.mac40kids.org.  Oh, by the way, you are all of 4.1 miles from your BBQ at Sokol to the Stoller Vineyards. See what I mean about the Kelty being in the heart of the heart of Oregon Wine Country?

Sunday, July 20. Vista Hills Winery and Bike Gallery are teaming up for a bike ride ande catered lunch and wine pairing. 100% of the proceeds go to Oregon’s Children’s Foundation. It all begins at 9:00 AM and wraps up to 2 PM.  After the ride, you will enjoy a  lunch at Vista Hills catered by Olive You from McMinnville.  You are a big 5.2 miles from the Kelty, about 11 minutes. Anyone interested in the ride can contact wineride@bikegallery.com for more information. To register they can visit any Bike Gallery location or call Kelly at 503.636.1600.  To find a Bike Gallery website near you, visit the Bike Gallery website

This is the perfect event to for aviation enthusiasts and people who just want something unique to do.

The McMinnville Chapter of the Northwest Antique Airline Club will host over 800 antique, war bird, classic, experimental and civil aircraft August 15th – 17th.

If flight is your thing, you have come to the right place. Attend the show. Enjoy live entertainment, every conceivable kind of antique airplane. Even take airplane rides. Of course you can’t miss the Evergreen Museum, host of the Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose” AND the new Evergreen Air and Space Museum.

For a great three-day week-end, your itinerary might look like this:

Thursday, August 15: Arrive at the Kelty (naturally). You can know in about 10 seconds if we have space available through our online reservation service. Or you can call our Inn Keeper at 1-800-867-3740.

(If we are booked, we generally know who in the area might still have space.) And if you arrive in the afternoon, you will enjoy complimentary Oregon wine and cheese.

Friday, August 16: Enjoy a fabulous breakfast. Is “fabulous” the right word here? Maybe “scrumptious?” Not quite. How about“supercalifragilisticexpealidocious?”

Enjoy the antique air show. It will be at the McMinnville Airport. Directions to the McMinnville Airport are here. Who knows how much time it will take? But you don’t have a schedule, do you?

Have lunch, maybe with one of the many vendors at the air shop. Then motor on over to the Evergreen Air and Space museum. That’s all of 3.2 miles. This will probably take the rest of your day. Come on back to the Kelty for our complimentary Oregon wine and cheese. Have a nap?

Let our Concierge help you with dinner reservations. You should probably take care of this when you make your reservations at the Kelty. Enjoy dinner and, of course, a great rest of the evening.

Saturday, August 17: Of course you start your day with an unbelievable breakfast.  You just can’t come to Oregon Wine Country without visiting some Oregon wineries. When you visit these, you want to sample lots of wine, right? And drive, right? Eh……….probably not the driving part. That’s why we now have our own classic limo. You drink. We drive. Find out more about our tours of Oregon wine country. Once again, our Concierge will have helped you with dinner reservations at yet another of the outstanding restaurants in the McMinnville area.

Sunday, August 18: Have breakfast. Then we recommend you motor over to historic downtown McMinnville. There you will find antiques, crafts, books, art stores, exactly what you would expect from a lovely old Oregon town. For a feeling of the historic district, you’ll enjoy this page from the McMinnville Downtown Association. And then, sadly, it’s back to the real world.

While you are enjoying Oregon wine country, you will certainly want to stroll historic downtown McMinnville.  Certainly drop by Currents Gallery, a unique gallery owned by the artists who exhibit there.  If you happen to be visiting the Kelty on the third Saturday of the month, you will enjoy McMinnville’s “Art and Wine” Walk.  Businesses all along NE 3rd Street, and nearby, host special art-related events and feature wine tastings from area wineries. Check out their calendar for the current featured artist.