Explorer Ponce de León abandoned his quest to discover the mythical land of wine after a tumble into the Fountain of Youth left him eternally underage. Take up his journey with this Groupon.
Choose Between Two Options
$12 for a wine-and-chocolate pairing for two (a $30 total value)
- One Woodblock Chocolate chocolate bar (a $4 value)
- 2 glasses of any ENSO or RESONATE wine (a $26 value)
$49 for an Urban Winery wine-education experience for two (a $168 value)
- Night with the winemaker
- Wine 101 class
- Wine-and-food pairing
- Barrel tasting
The wine-and-chocolate pairing partners local Woodblock chocolate with house-made wine to plumb the depths of flavor. Allow the winemaker to select complementary wines for your choice of chocolate, or choose your own combination. Reservations are not required for this experience.
The wine-education experience allows visitors to go behind the scenes with house winemaker Ryan Sharp, touring the facility and learning about wine through the Wine 101 class. Each tour includes the opportunity to sample some soon-to-be-released wines directly from the barrel. Guests will also enjoy a tasting flight of six Portland-made wines paired with delicacies such as sopressata and chorizo rioja from Olympic Provisions and seasonal, raw, and aged cheeses from Cheese Bar. The evening with the winemaker is available on select Sundays throughout April, May, and June, from 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.; reservations are required.
ENSO Winery
Each step of Ryan Sharp’s winemaking process embodies the small-batch ethos. Within the Eastside headquarters of ENSO Winery—Wine Press Northwest’s 2013 Oregon Winery to Watch—he mixes several winemaking techniques, yielding complex flavors inside miniature fermentation bins. He mashes grapes in miniature crush equipment and ferments whites and rosés in steel-jacketed tanks no larger than a fully grown mannequin. He sources grapes only from the West Coast, giving himself a framework for his experiments with varietals such as pinot gris, pinot noir, zinfandel, and counoise. As part of his craft-oriented operation, he never makes more than 100 cases at a time of the wines from his ever-evolving roster.
At ENSO's Urban Winery & Tasting Lounge, rustic wooden chairs gather under bare light bulbs and tin lampshades, surrounding a tasting bar crafted from old wooden timbers. Guides stationed at the bar pour tastes of ENSO- and Resonate-label wines, explaining how to decipher each wine's flavor notes. These wines—along with two rotating draft beers and libations crafted by 10 other local urban wineries—complement plates of marbled artisan salamis cured by Olympic Provisions, blocks of raw and aged cheeses from Steve’s Cheese Bar, and sweet and savory pies from Pacific Pie Co.