Starting him out early

Charlie and I took KC to Willamette Valley, Oregon to go wine tasting for his Birthday. We had a surprisingly wonderful time. I say this because I went into this trip quite blindly. Yes, I did research...a little. I tried booking us into a B&B but no one would take babies/children, I tried to do the right thing by becoming familiar with the wineries prior to the trip by trolling Wine Spectator, but I had a really, really busy week and didn't get around to it until the night before we left. So, yet again, I was flying by the seat of my pants, which is typically fun and spontaneous but a little stressful. We awoke at 6:30am on Saturday morning and headed to Oregon around 7:30. The drive was wet and windy and slightly depressing, but by this time I had told KC where we were going and we were both excited. We rolled into Newburg, OR around lunchtime and stopped off at The French Bear. Wonderful food and the owner, Doris Nelson is a love. She brought out the winery brochure and circled all of her favorites, adding that we need to tell so-and-so "hello" or tell what's-her-name that "Doris says hi!" She was great and stopped circling suggestions around the letter "D" in an alphabetized list of about 60 wineries, so really, we guessed we were on our own. I must say that after two days of tasting and buying, some of Doris' favorites proved to be our favorites too. To make a very long, relaxing, picturesque and delicious story short - we had a ball, met wonderful people, bought too much wine and become members of two wine clubs - yikes! We were a hit wherever we stopped because of Charlie and the answer to the question "can you take a baby wine tasting?" is YES! We even saw a few others along the way and all the drunk men and women loved flirting with Charlie. We're starting him out early and are proud of it. Oh, and the Pinots in Oregon? - Yum!