Man, we have been SO crazy busy that I have not had time to report on where we’ve been over the last week or so. Let me try to jog the memory.

Coolest thing by far was the last trip to Portland to get an update on the Pronetos site from the OpenSourcery boys. Let me tell you, the site looks great, thanks to Randall Hansen and Alex Kroman. @ Brian Jamison: give those guys a raise. Or at least don’t let them leave. Ever.

We also made several new contacts while we were over there. We met with Nathan Angell, the Director of Web Communications for Portland State University. Nate is a cool guy, that has his fingers in about everything that is of interest to Pronetos. We’re grateful for his help and feedback, and his association with Portland State University. PSU is a University that “get’s it” on about every angle as well. As an urban historian/economist, I can tell you that PSU has it going on. So thanks to Nate and the University for the help and assistance.

Wyatt and I stayed through Monday to meet with OpenSourcery, and another new friend, Kathy Long Holland. Kathy is on every board in Portland, and has done international product launches for a small concern called NIKE. She has also taught at numerous universities and will be teaching at the University of Oregon Business School this fall. Thanks for the marketing help, Kathy.

Lastly, but not leastly, we all met with the guys at EngineWorks - probably one of the more sophisticated search marketing firms that I am aware of. Most of your customers are going to arrive at your site through search - so these guys help engineer your site to make sure that customers find you. We’ll be making good use of their services in short order.

So that was the business portion of the trip. But you know we never go to Portland without having some fun.

This was the first time that all of the LGM guys have been together for our business meetings in Portland. And if all of us were going to be together, then all of the girls had to be there too. The reason for that is obvious: no way should the four of us be turned loose in wine country on our own.

So off to McMinneville we went, staying at the McMennamins there in McMinneville. And what a time we had. Apparently, we even got confused about who was traveling with who:

Chris and Wrigley?

Shane and Carol?

We again visited a couple of our favorites - Erath, and Bella Vida Vineyards. That’s Erath in the photo below. It was a bit foggy in the morning, but absolutely gorgeous as you will soon see.

After visiting those two standbys - oh wait - I want to give a quick congrats to the Bella Vida folks. They sold out of their O’Donnell Pinot this year, and Allison tells us that in fact they will probably sell out of everything they made. And that is a great thing since they are a boutique vineyard that makes excellent wines under their label. This year too will be the first year that Steven Whiteside actually makes his first wine, so that is going to be exciting! Can’t wait.

Ok - so we decided to throw caution to the wind and just follow the blue signs. There are blue signs all over the Dundee Hills indicating the locations of the wineries. Smart (Idyho Wine Commission are you listening??). Sure, we had a list of a dozen wineries that we wanted to visit, but we said to heck with it and just went rambling. It was awesome. We had this GIGANTIC white suburban with all of us in there.

We first went to the Penner-Ash Winery, and it is absolutely stunning. We had filled the back of the ‘Burban with fresh food from the market in McMinnville, and we were looking for a beautiful place to have lunch. Penner-Ash is it. If you go to Yahmill/Dundee and do not visit Penner-Ash, you are missing out. Here’s the proof:

The winery was BUSY! It was harvest season so everyone was getting the grapes in. Wyatt’s got lots of pictures of the grapes being put into the destemmer-crusher, and then into the vats where they let the juice separate from the skins and what not before being tanked or barreled.

Last stop of the day was the beautiful Willakenzie Estate. I highly recommend a stop there as well.

Still, after all the tastings (I think I have tasted about 60 Oregon Pinots), I like all three of the Bella Vida offerings the best. That’s just me though. Most of the gang are real fans of Erath, and well they should be.

Last shout out goes to Wyatt’s sister Wendy and bro-in-law Nathan who always have a car for us to borrow and a couch for us to sleep on when we go traipsing through Oregon.

Alright - I’m off to track the results of the Pronetos direct marketing campaign which is now underway! Peace out, and look for some posts on Wyatt’s incredible trip to Washington D.C. last week. Huzzah!