We flew to Portland Oregon this morning with United Airlines and picked up a hire car before driving to McMinville. The traffic was pretty terrible as we’d learnt that it was the first day of a long weekend – Veterans Day – and people were obviously “heading out”.

Mick had the window seat, so I had to lean over him to get a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge as we left San Francisco.

McMinville is a town of around 35,000 people about an hour south of Portland; which by the way, is not the capital of Oregon. It is the biggest town in Oregon, but Salem is its capital.

We have booked a cute little cottage on Elm Street about a 10 minute walk from the town’s centre.

We headed to the local supermarket to buy supplies for the next few days – we prefer to eat at home with a bottle of nice wine selected after a tasting. This was our first time in an American supermarket as we have only ever spent a stop-over night in the country before this. I read that Andersons was the favourite store in Oregon, so we spent an interesting three quarters of an hour there. Prices looked great to start off with. Mick bought 2 nice looking steaks and a piece of sockeye salmon. But when he checked the packets he realised the prices had been listed per pound and not per kilogram. Never mind. Prices for other items seemed higher than home, not even factoring in the exchange rate. And certainly they were much much more expensive than in France.

McMinville was voted to have America’s second best main street (I don’t know what year, but that’s what the brochures say, and I don’t know which town won) – boasting 34 restaurants, 17 wineries and 7 breweries.

As we are here to taste some wines, it sounds an ideal location to spend the next 4 nights.

The colours are beautiful at the moment – colours we don’t see in Australia. Well, in Brisbane !!

We walked into the main part of town after we had put a load of washing on, and had a wine tasting at the Willamette Valley Vineyards. It cost $20 each for a tasting of five wines.

The glasses were large and glamorous. However there was little to no information provided about the wines beyond what we could read on the brochure. The ‘server’ also did not give us much time to taste. No spittoons and no water were provided either.

It was the cheapest of their Pinots with others averaging $75. The tasting fee was not waived with a purchase.

We then walked a few metres to another bar where the owner Rich, went out of his way to give us a taste of his wines. We had already decided we’d only have one tasting here as I started to feel like I was skulling wines and not tasting them. I’d just have a sip of Mick’s – as we were on foot and I did not need to worry about driving.

Here at Pinot Vista Tasting Lounge we could taste five wines for $25. Rich soon upped that to six tastes and we chose three whites and three reds.

Again the glasses were glamorous and the pours were tasting size. No spittoons and no water though. I get the idea that at these tastings most people drink everything they’re given.

Rich wanted Mick to try a blend he had made as well as he was particularly proud of it, so that made seven. Mick bought a bottle of his 2017 Cabernet Franc. Rich explained that he had sourced grapes for that from the south of Oregon, close to California. I said to Mick that we should only be tasting local wines, but he totally disagreed with me.

When I went to pay Rich, he only charged us for the bottle of wine ($32) and not the tasting as we had expected. Of course we left him a good tip here. It’s not hard to do as every invoice has a section to choose for what size tip to add to the final bill.

We will get used to it.

When we got home so that Mick could prepare our dinner, I noticed a small note in the top of my bag.

My suitcase had been opened and inspected. It has a three barrel spiny thing that you must use the correct code to have it open, but oviously the Aviation Security has a way around that.

I was disappointed they did not have a scoring system for neatness and organisation of bags as part of their inspection. I felt sure I would have done very well with that!!

Fillet steak and mushrooms and lots of vegetables, plus a glass of each of the wine we’d bought earlier was a great end to our first day here.

We didn’t stay up much longer, and even that glass did not get finished. Our two big days in a row had caught up with us.

I have booked a tasting for Mick at a winery tomorrow at 11am and hopefully we can drop into a few others who accept walk-ins.