Travelers often come to Oregon for one of two things: to taste Portland's (now) legendary culinary scene and experience this Pacific Northwestern state's rugged beauty. But just a short drive from Portland, you'll find that cuisine and countryside blend seamlessly together in the Willamette Valley: Oregon’s de facto larder and wine cellar.
Bookended by the Cascade Mountains and the Coast Range, the Willamette Valley is vast, stretching roughly 150 miles long between Portland and Eugene, Oregon, and 60 miles wide. Nourished by lengthy summer days, wet winters, and fertile soils left behind by ice age floods, it’s an agricultural cornucopia. But it’s the miles and miles of patchwork vineyards that draw the eye; interspersed by evergreen woodlands and presided over by Mount Hood, it’s a picture-perfect wine country tableau.