Portland Magazine's 25 Wines $25 and Under Features 2 Organic Options

Two of the great weekday wines featured in Portland Magazine's roundup of Oregon's Top 25 Wines Under $25 and under come from some of my favorite Oregon producers - or really, just some of my overall favorite producers.

Both of these wines are featured in a book I am currently working on: Under $20: Top 100 Wines from Organic Vines.

Both are whites:

Rudy Marchesi (right) of Montinore
at a recent SF tasting

• Montinore's white Alsatian blend Borealis ($16). The blend varies year to year, but this is just always an intrinsically interesting wine - and as Portland magazine points out, great with anything spicy. The grapes are Biodynamic and organic; it's made in a certified organic and Biodynamic winery.

Montinore makes 40,000 cases a year of mostly affordably priced wines (although it has excellent small lot reserve wines, too) from its 210 acres of biodynamic vines in the northwest corner of the Willamette Valley.

Dai Crisp at a recent SF tasting

• Lumos Wine Co.'s Rudolfo Pinot Gris ($18).  This comes from the 10 acre Logsdon Ridge vineyard near Corvallis. It's full of melon, spiced apple and nectarine notes on the nose.

Lumos Wine Co. is the winery of Dai Crisp, vineyard manager extraordinaire, who is famous for farming Temperance Hill vineyard, one of Oregon's finest. Appreciation for his own wines, including a Pinot Noir from Temperance Hill, is rapidly growing.