There are summer camps where people make friendship bracelets, paddle canoes and roast marshmallows. Then there is Oregon Pinot Camp, where wine professionals voluntarily wake up before sunrise to discuss marine sediment, volcanic basalt and the reproductive habits of pinot noir.
In other words, I had found my people.
Oregon Pinot Camp is a four-day immersive experience in the Willamette Valley for sommeliers, wine buyers, retailers and other industry professionals from across the country. Calling it “camp” is technically accurate, although there were no bunk beds, bug sprays or trust falls. There was, however, a bona fide yellow school bus—the cheese wagon—waiting for us every morning at 7 a.m. sharp.
That bus did not care that we had been drinking wine until late the night before. The bus had a schedule.
Each morning began at a winery or a university with a glorious breakfast buffet, followed by seminar after seminar after seminar. We studied biology, geography, geology and, at some point, possibly genealogy. We discussed soil types, clonal selections, vineyard aspects, elevation and sun exposure with an intensity normally reserved for U.S. Supreme Court arguments.
This may not sound riveting to everyone. But to wine nerds and dirt dorks, this is the good stuff. This is Comic-Con with corkscrews.
We tasted chardonnay, pinot gris, pinot blanc and more expressions of pinot noir than I could reasonably count. We compared wines grown on different soils, slopes and exposures, learning how small changes in a vineyard can create meaningful differences in the glass. Wine stopped being merely something delicious and became a map—a record of weather, farming, geology, history and human decisions.
Then came lunch. These were not sad conference sandwiches wrapped in plastic. We feasted at wineries overlooking vineyards, with Mount Hood hovering in the distance like Oregon’s most dramatic photobomber. Each meal reinforced what the seminars had been teaching us: Wine does not exist separately from place. It is part of the landscape, agriculture, food and people who live there.
The dinners were equally spectacular. At venues including Sokol Blosser, Vinovate and Stoller, tents appeared among the vineyards and were filled with winemakers, proprietors and a truly irresponsible amount of beautiful wine. Magnums circulated, followed by three-liter bottles, six-liter bottles and even Nebuchadnezzars.
A Nebuchadnezzar holds 15 liters of wine. That is 20 standard bottles, or what I now consider a perfectly reasonable serving size for a table of wine professionals.
Library wines were poured from estates including Adelsheim, Beaux Frères, Domaine Serene and Bethel Heights, just to name a few. It was indulgent, yes, but also educational. Tasting older vintages lets you experience time—how acidity carries a wine, fruit evolves, tannins soften, and a vineyard’s identity can remain recognizable years later.
To wine nerds and dirt dorks, this is the good stuff. This is Comic-Con with corkscrews.
I stayed at the Dundee Hotel, which may have been the smartest logistical decision I made. It was not the budget option, but after full days of intense learning, eating and drinking, a quiet, spacious place to recharge felt less like extravagance and more like survival planning.
At the end of camp, I learned I had been assigned to the “drama-free bus.” Yay … I think. We certainly had fun, but apparently, we were mature, punctual and generally behaved like adults. That does not sound like me at all, so I thank my bus mates for keeping everything cool.
The campers came from everywhere, with large groups from the Carolinas, Georgia and across the East Coast. I unexpectedly reunited with Jade, a woman from Atlanta whom I had met two years earlier on a Washington State wine road trip. Then, over an early breakfast, I met Jordan from Tennessee, who was part of the wine program for a restaurant (or perhaps a group of restaurants … I had been drinking) in Chattanooga.
As our table worked through the usual introductions, a camper from New York mentioned that she had recently eaten at “a fantastic restaurant in Chattanooga.” She couldn’t remember the name of it at first, but she remembered “the awesome manager behind the bar” who had taken care of her. After a few minutes discussing the details, it all came together. It was a Michelin Guide restaurant called Easy Bistro. The “awesome manager” was Jordan.
What are the odds?
These moments are one of the things I love most about the wine industry: For all its regions, classifications and grape varieties, it remains a wonderfully small world. Wine creates a strange little family of people who care deeply about place, farming, flavor and hospitality. We travel across the country to learn, only to discover that our paths have already crossed.
Naturally, after studying all day, we ended our evenings at Lumpy’s, a local Dundee hangout and wine-industry institution. I am not sure how anyone still had the energy to drink, dance and commit acts of karaoke into the wee hours, but “work hard, play hard” is apparently still alive and well.
My education did not end when camp wrapped. I spent my final day with Mark Björnson, of Björnson Vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills, who took my already overactivated geek brain and turned it completely on its head. We talked about yields, dropping fruit, clonal integrity and the long-held belief that lower yields automatically produce better wine.
Dr. Patty Skinkis, of Oregon State University, has spent years researching that yield-quality relationship and questioning the rigid assumptions behind costly vineyard practices such as aggressive cluster thinning. The point is not whether higher yield is always better, or that growers should never drop fruit. The point is that wine education should challenge what we “know,” not merely repeat it. That is the real magic of education—it keeps curiosity alive. It reminds us that expertise is not having every answer; it is knowing enough to ask better questions.
I also discovered Willamette Valley Aligoté, Mondeuse, Gamay and Pinot Meunier—wines with major, capital-M potential. They deserve far more attention, and I plan to introduce as many people as possible to these beautiful, unexpected sides of Oregon.
After four days of dirt-worshipping, salmon-eating, wine-drinking and relentless learning, I came home exhausted, grateful and reinvigorated. Wine education matters, because it turns a beverage into a story. It connects what is in our glass to farmers, scientists, families, landscapes and generations of accumulated knowledge.
A special thank-you goes to Scott Neal, owner and winemaker of Coeur de Terre, for making this experience possible. Scott, thank you for welcoming me into your home, feeding our group an incredible barbecue with all the fixings, and including me in this unforgettable experience. You, your family and your wines are sublime—and they will always have a home in my shop.
Camp may be over, but class is most definitely still in session.
