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
Our Tasting Room Is Open!
Our Tasting Room is finally open and we are so excited to host you. We have snacks galore, as well as flights or glass pours to whatever fits your fancy! Come enjoy the view, meet Mali and bask in good company.
Finally, it seems, the day has come and Rizzo Winery’s gates have opened, the wines have been flowing and you can taste them while breathing in the fresh air of our wonderful country view.
Currently, we are open Saturday and Sundays from 11 AM to 4 PM. Since there is limited seating, due to the current pandemic restrictions and our smaller space, reservations are highly encouraged. We have both indoor and outdoor space, since our indoor space is severely limited, and our outdoor space is uncovered, the reservations are subject to cancellation due to inclement weather.
Our menu has two different flights available to choose from. Our Winemaster Flight is a mix of white wine, rosé, and red wines, whereas our Bold & Beautiful flight is all red wines. If you’d prefer to sip on one wine the whole time, we have glass pour options as well. To snack on while you bask in your wonderful company, we have a marketplace where you’ll find essential charcuterie items à la carte for your custom picnic needs.
Meet Mali, the woman behind the inner workings of our beloved Tasting Room! With her WSET* Level 3 Award in Wines, she has tons of knowledge she’d love to share as you taste through the beautiful wines of Rizzo’s Wine Cellar. From studying in Italy, to pouring you wine and all her personal projects, Mali has been in the wine industry for a few years now. The only thing she loves more than wine is her sweet dog Moose.
*WSET stands for Wine & Spirit Educational Trust and is an international school for wine and spirit professionals.
Muscat Canelli, Food's Best Friend
Muscat Canelli is a delicious white wine made in an off-dry style. Despite its slight sweetness, this wine is a very versatile wine to pair with many different types of food. From light desserts to salads, even to delicious take-out!
Muscat is often overlooked due to it’s off-dry nature. We’re here to tell you to forget what you’ve heard. This wine should be your go to for any dinner party, picnic at the park, charcuterie night, or take-out thai food.
Muscat Canelli is perhaps one of the most delicious grapes to snack on in the entire Vitis Vinifera species. The only grape I’ve ever had that tastes exactly as the wine does, floral, and bursting with sweet perfume. This fun little grape is also very ancient, one of the grapes that most others can trace their lineage back to.
Muscat is a grape variety with many variants of itself as well. Muscat Canelli in particular is a grape named after the town of Canelli (Città di Canelli) in North-East Italy in the larger winemaking region of Piedmont. Rizzo Winery, of course, has Italian heritage, and this grape also can grow in a cooler region than some of the other Muscat variants, making it a no-brainer to be planted as 1 acre of our peaceful vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills.
A picture from the smoke filled vineyard during the growing season of 2020.
Muscat In The Vineyard
We dry farm our vineyard, meaning we don’t use irrigation. We allow Mother Nature to shower our vineyard with the beautiful Oregon rain, and our soils soak and store the water throughout our growing season. We allow the grapes to grow with minimal intervention and harmful sprays. When we do spray we follow LIVE (Low Impact Viticulture & Enology) principles.
Pair The Wine!
Muscat Canelli pairs incredibly well with picnics. Blue cheese is the first that comes to mind, a blue cheese walnut and pear salad on a warm summer day, or a fancy blue cheese on a baguette topped with a bit of honey, delicious.
Traditionally, off-dry wines pair incredibly well with both their similar flavor profile, something slightly sweet like a fruit tart, cheesecake, or olive oil cake. Also, will pair with complete opposite something spicy like wasabi on sushi, a mild/medium spiced pad thai, or a cashew coconut curry.
For dinner, a poached fish filet with a salsa verde, or a simple lemon pasta with olive oil and red chili flakes.
Rizzo's Spotlight: Viognier
Viognier is one of the most delicious white wines there is, change our minds. Though it’s not often planted in the Willamette Valley, we took a chance and now make a wine that’s filled to the brim with textural intensity and pungent floral and fruit flavors.
It is somewhat unusual to find Viognier vines planted on the slopes of Oregon’s famed Willamette Valley. This is exactly why we planted them, we wanted to challenge our climate and make wines that no one else was. We may be biased, but if you tasted this wine, we’re fairly certain you’d agree that this wine is a drop everything, purchase right now, must-have.
Viognier in the sky
Viognier has its origins, like most other ancient grapes. Originating in present day Croatia and then taken to the Rhône Valley in what is now France during the Roman Empire. The Rhône is where Viognier found it’s light alongside Syrah. Viognier can have trouble ripening which is why we have it planted at the top of our slope, to ensure it gets the maximum amount of sunlight possible.
What is debatably most delicious about Viognier is that in the glass you’ll receive intense floral aromas and flavors like Riesling or Muscat, yet we ferment our Viognier wines completely dry. This grape can also develop really beautiful texture, which gives those Chardonnay drinkers something they’ve been looking for minus the intense flavors of oak and butter. This wine exudes sunshine, and is a perfect pairing for those early days in spring when the sun is out but the weather has a fresh crispness to it.
Viognier on the beach
We Reflect On 2020
At Rizzo Winery we reflect on this past year. Struck with hardship, we gained determination and decided we needed to better connect with you all. We are so grateful to those who enjoy our wines, and we are so excited for what lies ahead.
This year has been incredibly difficult for many, with many lives lost due to the coronavirus pandemic, wonderful restaurants and bars permanently shutting their doors after feeding hungry mouths for decades, and the wine industry shifting to new heights in an attempt to survive. At Rizzo Winery, we try to be thankful whenever we can and remember that there is always a rainbow at the end of a storm.
The Rainbow of 2021 here to save our sanity.
This year was a year of big changes for our little winery. We revamped our website and got with the times, getting an easier to navigate online shop just in time for that to be the only way to purchase our wines when the world shut its doors. We decided that you all needed to see the beauty that we are fortunately graced with every day at our estate, even when you couldn’t visit, and made an Instagram account to post these photos to. We started sending you all emails, some educational, some showcasing specific wines, and some all about the deals & discounts. Overall, this year we decided to take flight and connect with you all as best we could.
A very literal representation of us about to take flight.
We wanted to be there for you this year because the world turned upside down and we realized we all needed more from each other. Restructuring our wine club allowed us to give back to those who are there for us as our biggest fans. We gave our members more benefits, more complimentary wine tastings, and access to fun events when the fun can be had again. We reflected on where we had been lacking and decided to fully dedicate ourselves to improve. We invested in our tasting room and made it into a beautiful space where you’d want to spend the cold afternoon inside, or the warm afternoon outside, either way admiring our beautiful views when the world sees a bit of normality again. We believe in hospitality, and soon we will be able to host you all with open arms, glasses of wine, and charcuterie galore.
Our Wine Club Shipments ready for pick-up with their cute new sticker name tags and logo’d sides.
Overall, we’d like to say thank you. Thank you for making it through this year with us, we toast to you, as you are what allows us to keep making our delicious wines that are meant to be shared.
Until we can share again, cheers!
Team Rizzo
Celebrate The Seasonal Change
Soak up the last little bit of Summer with our Summer Bruschetta. This delicious treat is a wonderful pairing to our Muscat Canelli. We’ve also included some tasting notes, so you can bring this combo to a picnic and impress all your friends with your wine knowledge and expertise!
It’s still quite warm in Oregon, so we’re holding on to every last drop of summer we can. This recipe for Summer Bruschetta helps us deny that summer is coming to an end. Whip up a batch of our Summer Bruschetta, chill a bottle of our Muscat Canelli, and soak up some September sunshine!
Yum! We love enjoying fresh, local produce.
Print these out, or read ahead of time to impress your friends with all your flavor profile knowledge!
