Lucid Wild Winery Mcminnville Oregon
Some places you visit. LucidWild you sort of move into for four hours and then have to be politely asked to leave.
It's about a three and a half hour drive from Bend, roughly 159 miles by way of Salem, which technically makes it a weekend, not a day trip. The estate itself is in the Dundee Hills, on Worden Hill Road, with McMinnville a short hop away as your home base. And Mac is a genuinely great home base: Third Street is billed as Oregon's Favorite Main Street and placed second in Parade's America's Best Main Street contest, Yamhill County has more vineyards and wineries than anywhere else in the state at over 200, and there is a museum on the edge of town holding Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose, which still has the largest wingspan of any aircraft ever built. In May the whole town throws a UFO festival. It's a lot of personality for one zip code.
But we came for the winery. Let me show you.
Lucid Wild
Okay. So there's a caviar and sparkling wine experience, it's built for two, and it's $250: a full bottle of their 2021 Lust Vintage Brut, a 1.7 ounce tin of Imperia caviar, crème fraîche, warm French blinis, and Himalayan salt chips. You pick between Royal Ossetra and Kaluga Hybrid Reserve.
I want to be clear that nobody pressured me into this. I saw it on the menu and made a decision about the kind of afternoon I was going to have.
That's the private spirits collection at Jellies, and yes, they do rare liquor flights.
The thing I keep coming back to about this place is that it's clearly expensive and clearly serious and somehow not stuffy for one second. Nobody made me feel dumb about wine. Nobody hovered. They built a room like this and then let you put your feet up in it.
The CaveLounge. Leather couches, faux fur, a brass chandelier, and a wall of bottles under a hand-finished arch. It's a barrel cellar that decided to become a living room.
This is the quiet corner of the property. Upstairs is sunshine and views and everybody talking at once. Down here it's six people, one bottle, and nowhere else to be for 90 minutes. Both are correct. You should do both.
This is what's under the building. An actual working barrel cave, dug into the hill, with a table running straight down the middle of it. They host sit-down dinners in here. Look at the ceiling. Look at the lighting. Someone thought about every single inch of this and I refuse to stop talking about it.
L.J. Nicholas led the design and partnered with Anacapa Architecture out of Portland and Santa Barbara. The whole thing is 15,000 square feet, and my favorite detail is upstairs: the host stand is a raw hunk of natural basalt, a nod to the volcanic Jory soil the vines grow in. Fifteen thousand square feet of intention, and they still made sure the first thing you touch is a piece of the hill.
This is the Signature SkyTerrace Tasting, and this is the view you get with it. You're sitting over 800 feet up looking at the Dundee Hills and the Willamette Valley while somebody hands you five estate wines, each one paired with a bite built specifically for that glass. Estate chef Mason Goucher came from Okta in McMinnville, and you can taste the resume. The steak bite is marinated in their own Pinot Noir, which is the kind of move that sounds like a gimmick until you eat it.
It's $75 a person for 90 minutes, and they waive the fee if you buy two bottles. You will buy two bottles. Nobody has ever walked out of here with zero bottles.
And then there's the part I'm still not over.
There is an unmarked door beneath the terraces. Behind it is a speakeasy called Jellies. Glowing jellyfish tanks set into walnut, a vintage turntable, records, velvet, low gold light, and a cocktail in your hand. We drank negronis while The Doors played on vinyl. Underground. In wine country. On a Saturday.
Real talk before you get your hopes up: Jellies is members-only. You need to be a LucidWild Club member or come in with one, four people max per party. Every Saturday from 4 to 7 they run "Off the Clock" with cocktails, rare liquor flights and estate wines, no reservation, first come first served. If this is what finally pushes you into a wine club, I have zero notes.
