Weekend Getaway: McMinnville & Oregon Wine Country
Spend a few days soaking up Oregon's wine scene, eating local food, and taking in the beautiful mountains.
Welcome to the weekend!
Last month, we headed out to Oregon to explore the beautiful Willamette Valley, home to hundreds of wineries. We stayed in McMinnville, which was just named one of the best small towns for food and drink by Food & Wine, and it’s the destination for our Weekend Getaway this month. While there, we drank plenty of wine (it’s much more than pinot noir these days!), ate our weight in marionberries (the state’s favorite fruit), and went to excellent restaurants serving everything from pizza to pop-tarts. We share all our picks for McMinnville and the surrounding area below.
Then, download our brand-new Field Guide to McMinnville & Oregon Wine Country, which organizes all our picks into a three-day itinerary. We’ll lay out exactly where to go for coffee, breakfast, lunch, dinner, wine tasting, and more (we have a couple brewery picks, too). Each guide includes links to Google maps and Instagram and is downloadable for offline reading (perfect for planning your itinerary on the plane!). The Field Guide to McMinnville & Oregon Wine Country is free to paid subscribers, but can also be purchased on our website for $10.
Before we sign off for the weekend, we’ve put together your Weekend Reading list, featuring a visit to Ishnala Supper Club, the best barbecue joints in Texas, and more.
Thanks for reading!
Amy Cavanaugh & Kenney Marlatt
Wine Country Weekend
MCMINNVILLE, ORE. — Located in the beautiful, mountainous Willamette Valley, Oregon wine country is best known for producing outstanding pinot noirs. And while we certainly had plenty of those on our trip, winemakers here are producing so much more, including some wines using pinot grapes and some with others. We drank chardonnay and blanc de blancs, gamay and rosé, vermentino and riesling. And when we weren’t drinking wine, we were visiting breweries and restaurants with great cocktail programs.
This is a wonderful part of the country to visit if you love food and wine. Everywhere we went, we were served local ingredients — three spots, Okta, Humble Spirit, and Soter Vineyards, even offered food from their own farms. We ate loads of marionberries and hazelnuts, two local agricultural staples, but also Neapolitan pizza, French pastries, smash burgers, local seafood, lovely salads, and tacos (McMinnville has a robust Mexican food scene).
Unless you live within driving distance, to get here you’ll need to fly into Portland International Airport. From there, it’s just an hour’s drive to McMinnville, a cute town with tasting rooms like R. Stuart & Co., shops (don’t miss Third Street Books!), and restaurants. It’s highly walkable and makes a perfect home base for your stay.
We split our visit between two McMinnville hotels. The first was the Atticus Hotel, which had one of the best perks we’ve encountered lately — free espresso drinks at the front desk 24/7 (we availed ourselves of this a number of times during our stay). Later, we stayed at the Compass, which operates more like an Airbnb or fancy hostel than a hotel — there are nice perks like baked treats from local Alea Bakery on weekend mornings, a wine library, and complimentary wine and snacks in the bedrooms. As a bonus, we got to spend some time with all our fellow wine-loving guests and swap travel recommendations.
Let’s go see what McMinnville and the surrounding wine country has to offer, starting with a glass of local bubbly at the Atticus front desk.
