Transmenu powered by JoomlArt.com - Mambo Joomla Professional Templates Club

Okay, I admit it. I’m guilty. You’ve got me. I went into Wednesday Wines…ON A TUESDAY!...and I’m very glad that I did. Because Wednesday wines aren’t just for Wednesdays anymore. I can explain…

This all starts with Kathy Campbell, a transplanted Californian (“I like heavy reds,” she confessed under duress) who opened Wednesday Wines on Third Street almost exactly two years ago. As Kathy explains, “We’re not an Oregon Pinot shop. We want people to experience a wide range of wines.” And furthermore, Kathy added, she wanted to carry wines that people could enjoy during the week, and were priced accordingly. Wednesday Wines, then, refers to a wonderful little find of a wine, typically priced at under twenty bucks, that you’d pop open mid-week before traipsing down to your wine cellar on the weekend to uncork the hundred-dollar Chateau de Blah Blah.

My nephew Christopher was in town; he had just turned twenty-one, so naturally I took him to the highest spot in town and began to educate him on some subtle points of fine living. This peculiar rite of passage came courtesy of McMenamin’s Hotel Oregon, whose building has been a fixture on Third Street since practically before there even was a Third Street. Thanks to some clever design and remodeling, the Hotel Oregon’s Rooftop Bar is just about the perfect place to watch a summer sunset and dine al fresco, particularly with pints of the housemade Hammerhead and Terminator beers in hand, the better for which to make points about how craft beer is all about quality, not quantity.

My wife and kids were out of town, and looking around my home, I noticed a distinct lack of anything that could remotely be considered classy. Or charming. Or having the quality of, say, a cottage in Provence or a farmhouse in Tuscany. The puppet that my son made in the second grade was cute, of course, what with the toothpicks stuck into the shrunken apple head, but it wouldn’t quite carry the day at, say, the Museum of Modern Art. Ditto the Wile E. Coyote-shaped mug that is frequently the only receptacle left in the house from which to drink fine, red wine.

I’m always struck by how easily and naturally people come together in this town and by how convivial McMinnville is. There are nights when the whole downtown area feels like a party that is evolving before your eyes. It has something to do with the café society that is created by wine bars and restaurants and coffee shops in close proximity, but more than anything, it has to do with the people who live and work here, mixing easily with the visitors who pass through town.