August Cellars

This is a great little place! Took out of town
friends, little but mighty. They not only do
their wines, they process and barrel for
other small vineyards. Give this place a chance you will be glad you did. Oh the best
part is GREAT wine! We did our tasters, bought
a bottle and broke out our pick nik. Lance (which is awesome) served us out side.
The only one on our stops that would let us
bring out our own snacks. We all bought
wine. The Pinot noir is bad ass!!! Drinking
it right now

Joined the August Cellar wine club after extensively sampling countless other tasting rooms and wineries… no, seriously, I don’t know how many I’ve tried.
We just enjoyed near perfectly matched food and wine during the wine club pick-​up party. Baco Noir and the Pinots are our favorite… Oh! And the Pinot Gris, too.

Sunday Memorial Day Weekend 2014: Marvelous time with no less than six of the finest wine makers in the Chehalem Mountain area. Unhurried time to taste great wines and listen to the process of vintners magic. Great people and great wines: we left with good feelings and a variety of their wonderful wares.

Recently a couple friends and I decided to go wine tasting. We randomly chose August Cellars based on a write up in the book «Wine Trails of Oregon.» We couldn’t have made a better decision. August Cellars bottles their own wine and also has a space for smaller wine makers to keep their barrels.
That said, my friends and I don’t know a ton about wine. We are conversationally fluent, but certainly aren’t wine educated. The Tasting Room Manager, Charlie, was absolutely wonderful. He was both educational and conversational. We talked about the wine, our personal stories with wine, and he made some great recommendations for us. He even let us sample a few wines that weren’t on the tasting menu.
Overall I couldn’t have asked for a better experience. I left with an excellent bottle of wine that I’m excited to drink at home too! If you have the chance, definitely make a stop at August Cellars.

August Cellars was one of the wineries that we visited one summer weekend. It was probably one of the most educational, friendly and welcoming places. They offer several options for tasting and have a wealth of knowledge to share about the art of making wine. We even got to see one of the wine rooms and barrels. I’ll be back.

We stopped at this winery as a random stop and glad we did. The wines they make here are pretty good and their prices reasonable. I tasted the Pinot Noirs (theirs and others) and my wife the whites. While I didn’t find a Pinot I really liked (still looking for that elusive Pinot to match a New Zealand Pinot Noir I had years ago), I did get them to give me a taste of the Cabernet which was pretty damn good. We bought a bottle of the Cab and the Gurtz which my wife really loved.
They taught us a trick to try to figure out how a wine might taste 5 years down the road. Take a taste of the wine to get a baseline. With some wine left in the glass, put the palm of your hand over the top of the glass and shake it up (I’m not kidding… and make sure your hand is clean obviously). Now wipe your hand off and take another taste. You will notice a difference in the wine. If the finish is still strong, it will probably go more than 5 years. If the finish peters out, you need to drink it within the 5 years.
I guess the only way to test that out is over a five year timeline, but it’s a pretty neat trick if it works.

August Cellars provided one of the most fun winery stops of our recent visit to the Willamette Valley wine country! You have a lot of choices for how to spend your time in this area. We recommend spending some of it here.
BOTTOM LINE:
Wine tasting is about more than just the wine. It is about hospitality as offered by the people working in the tasting room, it is about the knowledge of the people doing the wine pouring, it is about an unpretentious «all people are welcome here» vibe, it is about universally accessible facilities and it is about tasting fees that are reasonable and refunded with a minimum purchase to make the experience approachable. In all of those things, August Cellars’ tasting room gets thumbs up from us!
WHAT THEY DO:
In addition to producing their own wines at the building which also houses the tasting room, August Cellars is set up to allow other small winemakers to lease wine making space /​barrel rooms. If you’re familiar with the model in Carlton for the Winemakers Studio, a similar business model is used here. A great way for independent wine makers to get started without having the financial hurdles of big capital investment in their own equipment and facility. .
TASTING SET UP & WINES:
The tasting fee was modest, although I can’t recall as I write this review what it was. It was refunded with our purchase.
The tasting room hostess greeted everyone who entered with a warm welcome and did an admirable job of juggling multiple pours for multiple people and wine sales. She knew a lot about both August wines, which she represented with enthusiasm as well as the wines of the tenant winemakers, also available to taste for a separate fee Both August Cellars wines and tenant winemaker wines were available for purchase.
While the Willamette Valley has vintners who make remarkably good wine, for reds there is a very strong lean towards Pinot Noir as the only red in many tasting rooms. Perhaps except for the most devoted fan of Pinot Noir (like my hubby as example), the rest of we mere mortals can find ourselves in Pinot Noir overload. So it was also great to have other red wines besides Pinot Noir in the mix at August Cellars like Marchel Foch, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon as examples. .And August may be the only winery in the valley making Port. (This one, Agustus Portus, from Marchel Foch grapes. We liked it and bought some.) Whites included Pinot Gris, Chardonnay, Riesling and others
We have to say these weren’t the most sophisticated wines of our most recent tasting tour, but good enough to purchase and the prices are very affordable (ranging roughly $ 12 — $ 25 /​bottle).
.THIS N THAT:
1) WALK OR ROLL ON IN: A model of getting equal access right through universal design (aka ADA compliance in the old days), there is a ramp leading up from the parking lot alongside the stairs. Once inside, all is accessible. I imagine this works as well for wheeled carts filled with winery materials as it does for wheelchair users or people pushing strollers. Bravo!
2) ROAM ABOUT: In addition to wine tasting, you’re free to walk the hall and look into the wine making studio spaces /​barrel rooms where wine is being made. Fun!
3) BREATHE IN; Because the tasting room is in the production facility, the aroma of wine is in the air. Ahhhh!
4) LOOK UP: Be sure to look up as the open structure ceiling is one of the many great design elements here. Gorgeous!
5) SUPPORT FAMILY FARMS: If you like supporting small wineries because it is also supporting local agriculture, visiting August Cellars is that for sure. Although few (if any) of their grapes are estate grown, the Schaad family which owns August Cellars (son Tom is the winemaker here and we had a chance to meet him when he stopped by the tasting room) has owned the English walnut and Italian prune orchards surrounding since 1942. Since these are still actively producing orchards (and now also include several acres of grape vineyards), the Schaad family roots (no pun intended) reaching down 70 years for farming the land is… VERY cool!

Been here twice, the first time was on a groupon group outing and the place was BUSY! The service was great, fun atmosphere and didn’t know one made us feel unwelcome. My friend and I stopped by on the way back to Portland and had a completely different experience. The woman behind the counter was rude and seemed to hate her job. We were the only one’s there for about 10 minutes then a wine tour guide walked in with 4 women and the woman who was working was so rude to her. It was embarrassing. The wine is ok, I would go back with a group/​on a tour but not for a tasting.

My wife & I stopped by August Cellars after a trip to Domaine Serene winery. I liked the look of August Cellars building. The hostess behind the counter (Heather) was very nice and very friendly. She explained the wines and the building. They use gravity feed for their wines (aka eco friendly). I liked the Marechal Foch from August Cellars as well as the Willamette Valley Pinot Noir from Artisanal Wine Cellars.
I would HIGHLY recommend visiting August Cellars. They are not stuffy or pretentious at all. They only ask for a $ 2.00 donation instead of a «tasting fee». Domaine Serene asked for a $ 15.00 tasting fee and another $ 45.00 for the Syrah (no discount for wine)…

It was the first winery we hit so we went in with no expectations. The building itself is a really cool blend of modern architecture with a quaint farm feel. Lots of glass and wood and really tall ceilings.
August Cellars seems to like their wine sweet and I don’t so it was a great surprise to find a pinot that was described as smoky amongst the Rieslings, gewurztraminers, and sticky pink wine. Since the unusually tasty smokey pinot was priced at a mere $ 18 we bought one of those and called it a successful stop.