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Willamette Valley is at its best for wine/vineyards in June to October. Good but not prime in May. Crowds peak in July and bottom out in December.
| J | F | M | A | M | J | J | A | S | O | N | D | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wine/Vineyards | 10 | 14 | 19 | 49 | 67 | 91 | 89 | 90 | 92 | 88 | 35 | 10 |
| Hiking | 4 | 12 | 19 | 25 | 42 | 69 | 88 | 88 | 92 | 65 | 11 | 4 |
| Crowds |
Swipe the table sideways for the rest of the year.
Pinot noir country with a marginal cool climate — which is exactly why the wine is good and why the weather is a gamble outside high summer. July and August are reliably dry; the rest of the year is Oregon
Easy valley and waterfall day walks. Nothing demanding.
October to April if the weather matters. Tasting rooms stay open but the valley is under grey drizzle for months.
Late summer weekends, harvest in September and October, and Thanksgiving weekend
Oregon tasting rooms are generally relaxed about children and many have lawns and food. Distances between estates are small.
McMinnville and Newberg are the bases with restaurants. Portland is under an hour from the north of the valley and works fine as a base if you would rather have a city in the evenings.
Smoke from regional fires can settle over the valley in late summer.
Kept out of the score on purpose. Averaging a rare catastrophe into a monthly number would tell you something false; the warning is the honest form.
The valley itself is agricultural rather than wild. The good walking is at the edges — the Coast Range one way, the Cascades the other.
0 is this destination’s own quietest month and 100 its busiest. The scale never compares one destination to another. Source: Wikipedia — McMinnville, Oregon