Savoring Oregon’s Wine Country, No Driving Required

“Violets are good in my book,” affirmed Anna Matzinger, who makes wine along with her husband, Michael Davies, under the label Matzinger Davies Wine Company in McMinnville, Ore., about 40 miles southwest of Portland in the heart of the wine-growing Willamette Valley, as we nosed into a sample of her pinot noir. “I’m looking for fruit, flower, spice and earth in a good pinot noir.”

I was looking for an accessible wine region — in terms of price, transportation and hospitality — when I went to the Willamette, which runs just over 100 miles from the outskirts of Portland to just south of Eugene. Here, in the mid-1960s, pioneering winemakers began growing grapes, particularly the finicky pinot noir variety that has since flourished, attracting more than 750 wineries today, many intimate enough for the winemakers themselves to guide tastings.

“There’s a distinct diurnal change in the Willamette Valley,” explained Ms. Matzinger, noting that an 80-degree day can fall to 40 overnight, a plunge that encourages grapes to retain their acidity. “That makes it nervy-delicious, like the spinal cord of the wine.”

So began my latest vocabulary lesson in wine in the season most associated with sipping: fall. When the weather turns cool enough to suggest earthy reds over chilled whites, the harvest attracts fans to wineries energized by the picking, sorting and crushing of grapes.

Rare among American wine regions, the Willamette Valley is connected to a public transportation system that links Portland to McMinnville, eliminating the “last mile” plague of public transportation systems that tend to strand riders just shy of their destinations. McMinnville is a pedestrian-friendly town of roughly 35,000 that serves as the area’s hub. Taking the bus there would allow me to avoid driving to wineries — a precaution, given my lack of discipline to spit sufficiently at tastings — and to focus on the nearly 20 tasting rooms concentrated in town.

Catching the bus

By westbound light rail and southbound bus, getting to McMinnville is straightforward, if time consuming.

From the Portland airport, I took the TriMet MAX Light Rail Red Line ($2.50) connecting to the westbound Blue Line, which crosses the Willamette River and threads past downtown landmarks to the city’s green suburbs, reaching the last stop, in Hillsboro, in about an hour.

In Hillsboro, I wandered around the station in search of the Yamhill County Transit bus that runs between the suburb of…