Get your Gris on next weekend in Oregon wine country

Oregon is going to “get its Gris on” next weekend, as the wine industry focuses itself on its No. 1 white wine grape.

“Oregon, Get Your Gris On” is Aug. 17-18 and is sponsored by the Oregon Pinot Gris advocacy group and was an idea that came out of the third annual Oregon Pinot Gris Symposium, held in June at Oak Knoll Winery in Hillsboro.

For the inaugural “Oregon, Get Your Gris On” event, 16 wineries will participate, including:

• A Blooming Hill
• Airlie Winery
• Anindor Vineyards
• Apolloni Vineyards
• Christopher Bridge
• Emerson Vineyards
• Kim Kramer
• Naked Winery
• Oak Knoll Winery
• Phelps Creek Vineyards
• Pudding River Wine Cellars
• Seufert Winery
• Spindrift Cellars
• The Four Graces
• Tyee Wine Cellars
• Walnut City Wine Works

‘Get Your Gris On’ highlights

• Airlie Winery will offer a vertical tasting of 2009, 2010 and 2011 Pinot Gris.
• Naked Winery will offer a vertical tasting of 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011 vintages of Pinot Gris.
• Pudding River will offer a six-year vertical (2007-2012).
• Oak Knoll will pair Pinot Gris with cheeses from House of Castello.
• Emerson Vineyards will pair “Pinot Gris and Things from the Sea” – seafood and its 2012 Pinot Gris.
• Apolloni Vineyards, which makes both a Pinot Gris and an Italian-style Pinot Grigio, will conduct an educational tasting to show the differences.

The event is being organized by Jo Diaz of Diaz Communications, the executive director of Oregon Pinot Gris.

Pinot Gris has been Oregon’s No. 1 white grape since 2000 when it surpassed Chardonnay. Today, Oregon harvests about 6,000 tons of Pinot Gris per year, enough for about 370,000 cases of wine.

Oregon’s largest Pinot Gris producer is King Estate, which makes 160,000 cases of Pinot Gris and sells it in all 50 states and 25 countries. Though Pinot Gris has been grown in Oregon since the 1960s, the grape didn’t catch on until King Estate made it a priority in the early 1990s.