This Oregon Wine Month itinerary covers three Willamette Valley wineries across two days—each worth the drive and best experienced with a glass in your hand.
Memorial Day weekend in wine country has anchored Oregon Wine Month in the Willamette Valley for years, and it remains the most useful entry point for anyone trying to understand what the region is actually capable of in a glass. Wineries open their patios, launch spring rosé and white releases, and welcome the season’s first real surge of visitors — meaning that the timing, the pours and the mood are all aligned in a way that doesn’t happen again until harvest.
The following itinerary covers two days and three stops built entirely around being outdoors: a dedicated sparkling wine facility beneath the Dundee Hills; a biodynamic estate in the Eola-Amity Hills where the garden is as much a part of the visit as the wine; and a Ribbon Ridge hillside where the tasting room is a vintage Airstream and the philosophy is that wine shouldn’t feel like homework.
Why Memorial Day Weekend
Oregon Wine Month runs all of May, but Memorial Day weekend is its heartbeat. The Willamette Valley Wineries Association’s Memorial Day Weekend in Wine Country event marks the moment when the season officially begins — when patios open, spring wine releases hit tasting room menus and the valley goes from beautiful to alive. The association’s interactive trail map (willamettevalley.com) lets visitors filter producers by region and experience type, making it an essential planning tool for anyone building an itinerary. The three stops below are spread across roughly 40 minutes of driving — manageable in a day, better over two, and worth every mile.
Day One, Morning: Domaine Willamette, Dayton
The first stop anchors everything that follows. Domaine Willamette, Oregon’s first dedicated sparkling wine facility, sits on the 99W corridor in Dayton in the heart of the Dundee Hills. It earns the designation of anchor not just because of its address but because of what its founders Jim and Jan Bernau have built since they opened in 2022. This is a place designed from the ground up to be a destination for traditional-method sparkling wine.
The VIP Walking Tour — a 90-minute experience that moves through the biodynamic gardens, the underground cellar and back up into the light — is the right way to arrive here, especially in late May. Lauren Druse, general manager of Domaine Willamette, describes the experience this time of year as especially vivid.
“In late May, the VIP Walking Tour at Domaine Willamette feels especially vibrant, with the biodynamic gardens in full spring bloom,” she says. “Guests walk among vines [and] native plants, surrounded by pollinators and thoughtfully designed features that reflect the winery’s approach to biodynamic farming.” The tour also moves through the underground cellar and starry sky room, where guests learn about méthode traditionnelle sparkling winemaking. It closes with a curated wine flight and small bites.
In May, the gardens are tended by master gardener and winery ambassador, Maggie Wejroch. Expect red flowering currant, wild lupine, meadow checker-mallow, flowering manzanita and crimson clover — a working, living farm that is bursting at the seams.
Domaine Willamette’s role in the broader Oregon sparkling story has grown considerably since it opened. The winery hosted Method Oregon’s inaugural Grand Tasting Weekend in July 2025 — and will host it again in 2026 — helping establish the Dundee Hills as a hub for the state’s traditional-method sparkling movement. “Domaine Willamette’s role as Oregon’s first dedicated sparkling facility places it at the forefront of the region’s growing reputation for world-class sparkling wines,” Druse says.
If you want to add something truly memorable, book the Sabering Experience. “Guests can tour the winery, learn about the sparkling process and saber a bottle of Domaine Willamette sparkling wine,” Druse says. “It’s an unforgettable, hands-on moment that brings the celebratory spirit of méthode traditionnelle sparkling wine to life.”
Day One, Afternoon: Brooks Wine, Amity
Head south from Dayton toward Amity and the landscape shifts. The Eola-Amity Hills have their own energy — windier, cooler, a different quality of light — and Brooks Wine is the perfect introduction to what this AVA does. Where Domaine Willamette is all sparkling, all the time, Brooks is something more layered — a biodynamically farmed estate that considers itself, in the words of winemaker Claire Jarreau, a specialist in white wine as much as Pinot Noir.
In fact, Jarreau describes the AVA as a natural fit for the estate’s dual focus on Riesling and Pinot Noir. “Brooks is a destination in the Willamette Valley for Pinot Noir lovers alongside Riesling and white wine lovers,” she says. “We proudly consider ourselves white wine specialists at Brooks.”
The reasons, she explains, are geological and geographical. “One of the great benefits we have is our access to so many stellar plantings of Riesling throughout the Willamette Valley, spanning all of the major soil types (volcanic, marine sedimentary and glacial deposited),” Jarreau says. “We have a strong love for volcanic soils, old vines, high elevation and windy sites, so the Eola-Amity Hills is, by design, where we farm and source most of our grapes. The wines of this region are inherently energetic, abundant in freshness and acidity — world-class examples of Riesling and Pinot Noir.”
The biodynamic commitment at Brooks runs deeper than a certification. “Biodynamic standards are rigorous in evaluation and highly selective in any inputs both in the farm and winery,” Jarreau says. “Because of our commitment to being a certified biodynamic vineyard and winery, our viticultural and winemaking practices are followed from vine all the way to bottle, ensuring that each wine from our estate is a pure representation of the vineyard, season and the hands that shaped the wines throughout the farming and winemaking process.”
That farm-to-glass philosophy is perhaps most visible not through the wines but through the estate itself, and Shannon Mayhew is the person most responsible for what visitors experience when they walk the property. Mayhew, Brooks’ biodynamic gardener, won the first-ever Oregon Wine Board Sustainability Champion Award in 2026. The award recognized her work building hedgerow systems on the farm, implementing a compost program for the tasting room and gardens, and completing what she describes as rewilding the Brooks property. “I was honestly awestruck,” she says of the recognition. “Being up there with such well-known figures in the Oregon wine world really drove home the significance of the moment.”
May is the month to see what Mayhew has built. Her description of the estate in late spring is the best argument for visiting now rather than later.
“May is one of my favorite times here — the whole place is just bursting with green,” she says. “The new vine leaves are so fresh and tender, and the cover crop starts to flower — the crimson clover and lavender-colored phacelia really put on the biggest show. In the mornings, you’ll see our chickens running around the vines and honeybees heading back to their hives nestled on our hill with pollen and nectar.”
The garden, Mayhew says, feels luxurious. “Lupines are blooming everywhere, and small vegetable starts are lined up in neat rows in the black compost. The place feels full of life and potential— native bees are found on every flower, and birds are constantly flying about the space, making nests in the bird boxes scattered around the property.”
The farm stand is stocked with plant starts for guests to take home. The kitchen is receiving trays of rhubarb and purple sprouting broccoli from the garden. “Brooks is a space best felt by visiting,” Mayhew adds. “The magic of the gardens is something you truly have to experience in person.”
Day Two: Sealionne Wines, Newberg
The third stop requires a short recalibration. Sealionne Wines, co-founded and helmed by winemaker Piper Underbrink on Ribbon Ridge Road in Newberg, is not trying to be what the first two stops are. There is no cellar tour here, no formal tasting room. The experience is a vintage Airstream, hand-built picnic tables, views of Mt. Jefferson on a clear day and the particular feeling of tasting wine while sitting between the actual rows of vines that produced it.
Underbrink designed the experience this way deliberately, and her explanation connects the format to the place. “Ribbon Ridge is a mystical place,” she says. “It is still a spot where you go wine tasting and meet directly with the makers and farmers. Most of the spots on the ridge are rooted in the soil — it’s about the wine and our humble beginnings. So for us, it felt perfect to situate the guest in the vineyard under the sun, just like the grapes. In a way we are honoring the beginning of Ribbon Ridge and the Willamette Valley, since this is how the first winemakers started out — selling their wines in their yard.”
Memorial Day Weekend carries particular meaning at Sealionne. “Memorial Day Weekend is our opening weekend, so we are full of stoke to be back running,” Underbrink says. “Our space is truly off the grid — it is peaceful and quiet (no traffic sounds here!) and a place to enjoy the first few sunny days of the summer.”
In May, visitors tasting at the Airstream are positioned to see exactly what is happening in the vineyard at that moment. This year, that includes something unusual. “We have a few blocks we are grafting from Pinot Noir to Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay right by the Airstream, so we can show the guests how grafting works,” Underbrink says. It is a detail that would be easy to miss from a tasting room, but impossible to miss when sitting next to the vines.
The wines themselves reflect a broader ambition than most Willamette Valley producers pursue. Underbrink makes Syrah and Cabernet Franc alongside Pinot Noir — a range that reflects the full diversity of what Oregon’s climate and geography can produce. “When we moved to the Pacific Northwest, I truly felt like a kid in a candy shop,” she says. “I was so excited to be surrounded by so many different varietals, climates and wine styles. Oregon is unique in that where you can make beautiful cool-climate Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, you can also make Cabernet Franc and Syrah from the Gorge or down south. I wanted to honor that.”
The diversity on the list is less a provocation than a love letter. “I would say the wines grew out of a reflection of what I love to drink and make, and that then turned into a statement about the diversity of where we live,” Underbrink says.
What she wants visitors to carry home from Sealionne is something harder to bottle than any single wine. “We want visitors to leave feeling inspired, giddy and relaxed,” she says. “Our space is about making wine accessible. It is about connecting with each other, the vineyard and the outdoors. I hope our guests walk away feeling a sense of relaxation around wine — that we just want people to enjoy themselves and make memories. No one knows it all about wine, which is why I chose wine. It is a space of continual learning, or a space of play and enjoyment. What it shouldn’t be is a space of exclusion and frustration.”
Plan Your Trip
The three stops on this itinerary sit within about 40 minutes of each other by car, making them manageable as a single long day or, better, spread across a two-day weekend.
Domaine Willamette (19255 N Highway 99W, Dayton) recommends booking the VIP Walking Tour and Memorial Weekend tickets in advance at domainewillamette.com; the $40 Memorial Weekend open house (May 23–24) sells out. Brooks Wine (21101 SE Cherry Blossom Lane, Amity) is open for tasting Thursday through Sunday; reserve via brookswine.com. Sealionne (19500 NE Ribbon Ridge Road, Newberg) takes reservations through Tock at sealionne.com and welcomes walk-ins Thursday through Sunday.
For an overnight, The Allison Inn & Spa (2525 Allison Lane, Newberg) sits within easy reach of all three stops and is the valley’s most established luxury lodging option. For lunch, Red Hills Market (155 SW 7th Street, Dundee) offers wood-fired pizza and a focused local wine list — a reliable stop between the Dundee Hills and Eola-Amity Hills. For dinner, The Joel Palmer House (600 Ferry Street, Dayton) has built a long reputation as one of the valley’s most distinctive tables.
Designate a driver or arrange transportation. These stops are spread across genuine wine country — none of it is walkable, all of it is worth the planning.
