the Rizzo winery NOTEBOOK
At Rizzo, we want to help our valued customers learn about how many hands this bottle went through before reaching their glass - or why wine has been the chosen beverage for thousands of years throughout history. We wanted to share the tools that enable our wine lovers to feel confident about discussing the bottle of Rizzo they are drinking with friends.
We created the Notebook to help get you there and to pass on our wealth of knowledge to you.
Summer Is Here!
Rizzo Winery is celebrating the summer season with a flight to cool you down while you soak in the sun on our patio, and new hours on Friday so you can stay later with your friends and make those summer memories!
To celebrate the season we’ve got a special flight and new hours!
To us, Summer means getting off early and hitting the happy hour! At Rizzo, happy hours are here all summer long on Fridays from 3 to 7 PM. Reservations are encouraged as we have a small space, but they’re not required. We understand that some things are spontaneous, and we hope you spontaneously decide to visit our Estate Tasting Room!
While tasting through our Summer Breeze flight you’ll feel as free as that bird of prey hunting the sky in the photo above. It begins with our bright 2017 Chardonnay, made entirely in glass. This keeps the flavors fresh and authentic to Chardonnay itself. To continue keeping your cool through the flight is our delicious 2015 Viognier made from grapes on our estate! A heavier, creamy mouthfeel with this white wine gives us a different perspective from the Chardonnay before and gives us the best of both worlds. Our 2019 Pinot Noir Rosé is darker than most rosé’s, a little more time with the skins increases the color in the wine, but also the flavor complexity! This wine is perfect if you want to bridge the gap between rosé and red wine, or to convert your red wine loving friend to the rosé side. To finish off the flight we have our 2014 Carménère, a silky and spicy red wine that pairs perfectly with vegetables right off the BBQ!
Our Estate Tasting Room is Open
Friday 3-7 PM, Saturday and Sunday 11-4 PM
Carménère: Once Lost, Now Found
Carménère is a grape with a very interesting history and creates delicious wines. We source our grapes from Oregon’s Columbia Valley, and now have wines exclusive to our Tasting Room that you should come and taste.
Carménère is a luscious, silky red wine with flavors of ripe raspberries, red cherries, green peppercorn and green bell pepper. A grape originally from Bordeaux, now mostly grown in Chile, and has been found in the beautiful Oregon Columbia Valley.
Our Carménère is exclusive to the Tasting Room, come visit us, taste it and take some home!
Carménère has a very interesting history, starting during the 16th century. Under Spanish rule, Chile was importing that red liquid gold all the way from Europe. Since the wine was traveling such far distances, it was becoming oxidized in the barrels on the ships and wasn’t at the quality they wanted, so they started making their own. As the Chilean wine industry started booming, wealthy landowners began importing vines from France, mostly from Burgundy.
As the wine industry in Chile kept growing, Carménère wasn’t being bottled, it was mostly Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Malbec. Now with science advancing, there were some differences amongst the Merlot vines in vineyards. There were some vineyards of Merlot that were ripening consistently later than their neighbor Merlot vines. In 1994 scientists decided to test the DNA of these vines, only to discover that instead of Merlot it was Carménère!
Now, this was a very exciting discovery because during WW2 the majority of France’s vineyards were destroyed both by war, but also by Phylloxera, a vine-eating disease brought over by Americans. During this time, Carménère was lost. Its vineyards in France completely wiped out, and when France went looking for vines to restart their own vineyards, Carménère was thought to be nowhere else in the entire world. When they discovered it was in Chile, the world rejoiced that this unique cousin of Cabernet Sauvignon was found once again.
Our 2014 Carménère has a beautiful body, coating your mouth with ease while still easy to sip enough to drink without food. This wine has flavors of ripe raspberries, jalepeño pepper, black peppercorns, and ripe black cherry. Only available in our Tasting Room, this wine is featured on our Bold & Beautiful flight but also is our May special.
For May our 2014 Carménère is only $25 a bottle,
originally $36!
Tasting Room Menu!
Opening our Tasting Room in April 2021, here is our current Tasting Room Menu.
Rizzo Winery’s Estate Tasting Room opened the first weekend in April 2021, below is our current Tasting Room menu.
Holiday Season At Rizzo Winery!
Rizzo Winery has gift sets for all the wine lovers in your life! From tasting through our Estate wines, Sampling Big Bold Reds, Library Tasting, and drinking some of our Winemaker’s best work, these gift sets are a great deal.
The holidays have arrived at Rizzo Winery! We have curated some wonderful gift sets at great discounts for you to gift those loved ones that might need a little extra wine this year.
The Rizzo Winery Estate Sampler is an excellent choice for a gift to any wine lover! This gift set covers all the wine bases; red wine, white wine, rosé and even an off-dry white. While tasting through the different styles of wine we make at Rizzo Winery, you’ll also be tasting the essence of our Estate. We have 9 acres of vineyards, in the windy Eola-Amity Hills, where Pinot Noir, Muscat, and Viognier grow harmoniously together. These vineyards are sustainably dry-farmed and follow organic growing principles. The windy vineyard site also allows for these vines to be naturally more disease-resistant.
This Gift Set is straight from our Cellar! The Library Vintage Set showcases how truly magical a beautifully-aged Pinot Noir can become. As Oregon Pinot Noir ages the fruit flavors develop from fresh to earthy, dried and jammy. With these wines each coming from a unique and outstanding vintage, they all have a story to tell.The year 2006, was the inaugural year of the Eola-Amity Hills AVA. A warm and dry summer, a near perfect vintage was the way to celebrate. In 2008, Mother Nature was rewarding with wide temperature swings allowing the fruit to develop balance between richness and depth. An abundance of clusters on the vines allowed for us to be specific and focused on which would create the most outstanding wine. This gift set allows you to take a journey through time, tasting these various years and reminisce on old times.
Though in Willamette Valley, Pinot Noir is king, we often yearn for something a bit bolder. We are so lucky being so close to Oregon’s Columbia Valley, where the sunshine never fades and grapes can ripen to their heart’s content. Our Big Bold Sampler showcases another side to David Rizzo’s winemaking expertise, silky and powerful red wines. These wines are delicious, delivering dark fruit flavors, effortlessly dancing around flavors of vanilla, clove and nutmeg, the flavors of oak. These wines are from our cellar where they have had years to create harmony in the bottle. Showcasing the 2012 Zinfandel, 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon, and 2012 Petit Verdot, this holiday sampler is luxurious and perfect for the red wine lover in your life.
At Rizzo Winery we pride ourselves on being The Winemakers Wine, allowing David Rizzo full artistic control of his passionate process. A natural gift, David uses his winemaking tools like paintbrushes on canvas. The Winemakers Sampler is a complete expression of his repertoire. Pairing his masterpiece, Cabernet Sauvignon, with his Estate Pinot Noir and stunning fan favorite the Carménère*. Each bringing a different flavor profile, from the rich and bold Cabernet Sauvignon to the lighter, more finessed, Pinot Noir, to the silky and spicy Carménère.
*For online sales of this gift set we have replaced the Carménère with the Tempranillo.