Dundee
Yamhill County, 97115
This town is quickly morphing into the slick Sisters of the wine country. Wine tasting is everywhere, and the food is there to go with it. Trendy gift shops, bed and breakfast lodging and murderous traffic jams are all awaiting your visit. If you appreciate wine it is worth the effort but you might want to steer clear on days when half of Portland is trying to get to the Indian casinos on down the road.
Dundee is truely in the heart of Yamhill wine country. When passing through the area you will see that almost every south facing slope is planted to grapes. If you have time visit the wineries themselves. Touring the processing plant at a winery is an education in itself. The degree of control necessary to produce great wine is amazing. And before that you have to have the luck of a great year!
Before the wine industry came to Yamhill county hazel nuts were the big crop. Although faced with difficult disease control problems the nut industry is still thriving in the area. Dundee is a center for processing the nut crop and it is a great place to pick up hazel nuts (filberts) and walnuts direct from the growers.
Alfie's, the pink restaurant pictured above has great continental cuisine accompanied by fine local wines (Change Notice July 2012: Alfie's is now a Mexican restaurant complete with yellow and red decor!). The other establishment pictured is typical of the remodeling of Dundee. The central barn-looking area was just that when they started--a big red barn. Now it features trendy shops, restaurants, gifts and wine tasting (Another Change Notice July 2012: The trendy shops and wine are gone and a church has taken over). Help may be on the way with the traffice problem. ODOT has started right-of-way acquisition for the new Newberg-Dundee bypass (July 2012).