The Wine Knows

Author Judy Nedry, who recently released her first murder mystery An Unholy Alliance, is putting on a contest for copies of her book and other prizes.

All you have to do is solve a murder.

After 29 years of providing a venue for tasting Oregon wines, the Oregon Wine Tasting Room is closing down June 22.

The operation, owned by Myron Redford of Amity Vineyards in Amity, Ore., was the first tasting room owned by a winery that provided samples from competing wines.

Are you looking for a way into the Northwest wine industry? Here's a business opportunity: Napa North, a wine shop in Klamath Falls, Ore., is up for sale. The owners are relocating to the Midwest and are, shall we say, motivated sellers.

Cal Knudsen, a Northwest forest-products exec, lawyer and Oregon wine pioneer, passed away April 24 in California after a battle with cancer. He was 85.

Knudsen planted a vineyard in 1971 and became partners with Dick Erath in the early 1970s, and Erath Vineyards' winery even changed to Knudsen-Erath from 1975 through the early 1990s. It changed back to Erath Vineyards after Erath bought out Knudsen's interest in the business.

We have launched a new wine events calendar on winepressnw.com.

We'd like your help testing it out.

Our old system consisted of wineries, wine shops and organizations submitting their items on a form, then us adding them to a page in chronological order. When an event passed, we had to manually remove it. It was an arduous system that wasn't exactly friendly to us or to you.

Last week, we created a Facebook fan page for Wine Press Northwest.

If you're on Facebook, you can get to it here or by searching for "Wine Press Northwest" once you're on Facebook.

Baker City, Ore., isn't exactly in the midst of classic Northwest wine country. This city on the Oregon Trail has a lot more in common with Idaho's Snake River Valley than the Willamette Valley. But that doesn't deter the folks in this western town from enjoying the finer things in life.

I'll bet Bob Bertheau is wearing a muscle shirt around Chateau Ste. Michelle today. If he isn't, he should be.

The Willamette Valley Wineries Association has released its 2009 touring guide, and you can order yours online for no cost.

Pacific Northwest wines fared extremely well last week at the Grand Harvest Awards wine competition in California's Sonoma County.

At least 37 Northwest wines brought home gold medals in the competition, which takes a particularly close look at how wines show a sense of place, or terroir.