Oregon Wine

Wine is passion in a glass, just as food is passion on a plate. Every wine has a story that makes it unique. The story and passion starts with choices made by the growers from the major decisions like when to trim leaves or when to start harvesting the fruit, down to the smallest decisions like if you will sing to your grapes (yes some still do this). These decisions affect the outcome of wine just as much as the quality of a vineyards soil, amount of rain, and storms that pass overhead. The grower and the winemaker are often one in the same person, however there are also many winemakers that are not growers.

The winemaker's passion shows in the choices he makes during fermentation and storage of the wine. Varieties of grape to use, how long each stage of the fermentation will last, what kind of barrels will be used for storing the wine, the quality and timing of maintenience performed on the barrels during storage, even a decision as simple as when to bottle matters.

Now we come to your point in the wine's story. How did the wine bottle get from the winemaker to you and how long did it take? The time and environment that bottle remains in will affect changes in the flavors and quality of the wine. Did you get the wine from the shelf in a store or did you visit a vineyard or tasting room? the path you took to get to that bottle will matter to your part in it's story just as much how it got to you because if you are paying enough attention even your mood and environment while you are drinking the wine will cause each bottle to taste different.

There are two important pieces of information about the wine industry most people do not know. The First is: the wine you can buy in the grocery store is but a tiny fraction of the wine available and finding it is only as adventurous as you make it. For every winery you see on those shelves there are more than a thousand others making wine worthy of their passion. You could choose to only have the wine from the shelves at the grocery store, or you can look for and visit those with a passion for wine not on the shelves.

The Second is: wine on those shelves are meant to attract you to their winery's Tasting Room where they keep the higher quality wine they reserve for their wine club members, and deliberately keep off the grocery store shelves. The quality of wine on those shelves is not the best you can find, nor is it the worst. The quality is meant to be good enough to grab attention and pique your interest to investigate more of their wines, but also a low enough quality they do not want to keep it in their own inventory. You read that correctly, wineries tend to keep the better wines in their inventory and make them available exclusively to those that visit the tasting rooms and their wine club members.

This project was created with the sole purpose in mind of helping those continuing their wine adventure, how you chose to be a part of the next bottle's story is up to you.

Wine Regions

Oregon is home to 1,058 wineries and over 40,000 acres of planted vineyards as of 2021! Below in an interactive map of how many acres have been planted in each county in Oregon. As you can see a large majority of vineyards are in Yamhill County which is a major draw into the Willamette Valley wine scene. Hover around the map to see how many aces are grown in each area.

Wine Production in Oregon

With the 40,000 acres of grapes planted throughout Oregon, there is a definite favorite! Below you can see how much of each variety was produced in 2021 broken down by white and red. You can see that in the white wine category there is a clear higher proportion of Pinot Gris produced, a whopping 19 thousand tons! However, that pales in comparison to the highest red wine produced which is Pinot Noir at 69 thousand tons!

Wine Ratings

Wine ratings have become an easy way for consumers and the industry to understand what they’re about to taste. The 100-point scale is the most common and what our website uses.

It was first developed by a lawyer named Robert Parker in 1984 after starting the newsletter The Wine Advocate. He wanted to develop a system that was straight forward and provide both experts and casual consumers a general expectation of what they’re about to taste. He began using a standardized system of a mathematical grade paired with 2-3 sentences per single glass of wine tasted. He always took great lengths to ensure the integrity of his ratings by paying for the wine personally and never accepting gifts.

Over the years his system was modified to include the following traits of wine: appearance, consistency, nose, taste, complexity, varietal representation and even including room for improvement along with the mathematical score. The 100-point system has long since been adopted globally with several different wine publications like Wine Enthusiasts and Wine Spectator.

The mathematical ratings for wine is as follows:

96 – 100 – Extraordinary

90 – 95 – Outstanding

80 – 89 – Barely Above Average to Very Good

70 – 79 – Average

60 – 69 – Below Average

50 – 59 – Unacceptable

Fun Fact! Throughout Parker’s tasting and rating career he has tasted over 220,000 wines and has granted a perfect 100-point score to only 76 wines.

Some definitions that consumers may find helpful when reading reviews:

• Sweet - Higher amount of residual sugar from the fermentation process.

• Dry - Higher amount of tannins which will cause the ‘dry’ sensation in the mouth after drinking. Typically little to no residual sugar from the fermentation process.

• Tannins – The chemical compound that is responsible for the ‘dry’ mouthfeel found in wine. It is found in grape skins, seeds, stems, and inside of the wooden barrels that are used during the wine aging process. Since red wine is made from the entire grape (and sometimes stem) they will typically have a higher tannin amount than white, which just uses the juice of the grape.

• Red – Wine that is made with the entire grape

• White – Wine that is made with just the juice of the grape

Data Analysis

Purpose

To give fellow wine lovers the ability to filter through desired wine and winery attributes and give them a quick visual of where to visit provided wineries.

Results

Wine Varieties by Price (Category and Region filter)

Discussion

We utilized information scraped from Wine Enthusiast and Wine Spectator to give us information on Oregon wines like cost, rating, category, region, and vintage year. We scraped Google Places API to gather information on Oregon Wineries like the name, address, and website. Using this information, along with production data from Oregon Wine Board, we were able to observe the following.

A quick review of the production and review data shows a clear Oregon favorite: Pinot Noir. Oregon produces a shocking 69,936 tons produced and holds the top spot in ratings with 98-points: Evening Land Vineyard’s 2012 Pinot Noir Eola-Amity Hills Seven Springs Vineyard La Source. Overall, Pinot Noirs are the most rated wine variety which tracks as it also being the highest produced variety. However, not all Pinot Noirs are created equal, the Amity 1999 Eco Wine Cattrall Brothers Pinot Noir holds one of the lowest wine ratings of 80 points. Even though the Robert Parker ratings go down to 50 it has been found in the wine community that if a wine is given a rating of less than 80 points it is not highly advertised with its rating which could explain why in our data scraping the lowest scores found were 80-points.

Luckily while traveling around Oregon there isn’t much difference between regions. For our data scraping there were three regions identified: Willamette Valley, Southern Oregon, and Other which is summarized by Northwest and West Oregon. The average ratings for these regions were 90.45, 89.03, and 87.52 respectively. Willamette Valley though does have the highest number of ratings between the three regions which is related to the higher number of wineries and vineyards in the area.

For one that has money on the mind there is a wide price range to Oregon Wines. With the lowest cost of $12, one wine being a tasty Willamette Valley Vineyards 2010 Riesling with a 90 point ratings, up to $150. There are three wines that hold the $150 all from Archery Summit Estate, a 2011, 2012, and 2018 Archery Summit Pinot Noir with a 94-, 94-, and 93-point rating respectively.

Resources for Project

Wine list retrieved from Wine Enthusiast website
Wine list retrieved from Wine Spectator website
Winery and Vineyard Locations retrieved from Google Maps through the Google Places API
Oregon Wine Board Vineyard & Winery Report and Industry Statistics Oregon Wine Board website
The Atlantic Article: The Million Dollar Nose The Atlantic Article website
Marketview Liquor: Wine Rating Systems Marketview Liquor website
Hope Family Wines: What Makes WIne Sweet or Dry? Hope Family Wines website
Data was cleaned with Python's Pandas Library
Data is stored in an SQL Database on Amazon Web Services
Web app is built using Python's Flask Framework and Javascript
Web app is hosted on Amazon Web Services for any to use.

About Us

Nick

My wine journey in started at the age of 14 when my dad taught me about it's snobbery with private tasting events. Today I seek out wineries that i have never been to on a regular basis and have become a regular customer at several local wineries.

Favorite Wine: The wine currently in my glass

Favorite Oregon Wineries:
- Sno Road (Echo, OR)
- St. Innocent (Jefferson, OR)
- Marchesi (Hood River, OR)
- Willamette Valley Vineyards (Multiple locations)
- Zerba Cellars (Multiple Locations)

Darrin

IM Darrin I'm 37 and live in Portland OR. I enjoy learning about new things and by creating this website with everyone i learned how many types of wine oregon produces and the high amount of wineries that im going to enjoy visiting with friends

Zoey

I first started experimenting with wine/ alcohol when I just turned 21 and was working as a bartender; I would sample a little bit of all the drinks I would make and on some nights after work my manager would let me try maybe less than half a glass of wine here and there, just so I would know what they tasted like. My first wine love was a dessert wine, Moscato. But now-a-day I usually go for a glass of Cabernet at a nice dinner.

One of my favorite summer activities is going wine tasting at the Wineries.

My favorite so far has been:
- Marchesi (Hood River, OR)
- Willamette Valley Vineyards(Turner, OR)
- Mt. Hood Winery (Hood River, OR)

Michayla

I graduated from Oregon State University with a Bachelor of Science in Food Science in Technology where I was surrounded by wine lovers and good wine. It was with these friendships where I learned about how to taste wine and what it was like to work behind the scenes at wineries and breweries. My appreciation has grown over the years as I’ve gotten to travel more and taste some great wines, but Oregon still has my heart!

Favorite Wine: A sweet Riesling or Moscato!

Favorite Oregon Wineries:
- Domaine Serene Winery (Dayton, OR)
- White Rose Estate (Dayton, OR)
- Evoke Winery (Hood River, OR)