Two-wheeling in Wine country.

Byline: MIKE STAHLBERG The Register-Guard

RICKREALL - The rolling hills west of Salem are a visual mixed bouquet. Miles of grain and grass crops give way to forest and Christmas tree farms interspersed with vineyards - all held together in a vase of narrow, winding country roads.

An ideal area, Tom Huggins thought, for a Sunday bicycle ride - one made more enjoyable by occasional stops to sample offerings of some of the wineries that dot northern Marion and southern Polk counties.

So Huggins decided to start offering a cycle-and-sip tour of the Eola Hills Wine Growing Region.

"I think it's a great idea, because I'm a bicyclist," Huggins said.

It's an idea that's caught on as quickly as Oregon pinot noir.

Thirty riders showed up for the only `Bike Oregon Wine Country' ride Huggins offered in 1999. The number of rides and riders doubled the next year, and doubled again in 2001.

Huggins decided that was enough growth for now, thank you. After all, the founder and general manager of Eola Hills Wine Cellars does have grapes to grow and wines to bottle. He can't spend all of his time on a bike.

So, like last year, Huggins is offering four bike tours in 2002 - one each Sunday in August.

The 52-mile rides begin and end at Eola Hills Wine Cellars and include stops at a half-dozen other wine-tasting rooms, plus lunch, two water-and-snack stations, "sag wagons" to transport any wine purchases or to give weary riders a lift over the hills, and a barbecue dinner and more wine tasting at ride's end.

About 50 cyclists signed up for the first tour de vineyard of 2002, but several canceled when the forecast called for rain. And Sunday's riders did get doused by heavy showers - several times.

"This is pretty rare," Huggins said during a between-showers lunch stop. "There are some dates in August where it's never rained here in the history of record keeping, so it's like one out of one hundred chances of rain in August."

But most of the riders seem unfazed by the rain, which provided a handy excuse for lingering a little longer over a chardonnay or merlot.

"I would take this over the 98-degree weather we had last year," said Greg Harlow of Lake Oswego, who nonetheless enjoyed the 2001 ride enough to want to do it again.

"I really liked it. It's beautiful. It's challenging. And I think the route was better this year.

"Last year, they ran the route in reverse, so you hit a lot of those hills right at first, which pretty much took my legs out from under me right at the beginning. This way, with the flat part first and then some gentle hills, you got about two-thirds of the ride done before you hit a lot of bad hills."

The difficulty of the hills, of course, is in the eye of the rider. The two biggest hills probably represent elevation gains of about 600 feet, Huggins said.

"I thought the route was great," said Dave Berkeley of Portland, a tandem bike rider who, with his wife, Pat, is a veteran of week-long "wine country" bike rides in California and in the Burgundy region of France.

"There were some tough hills, but they weren't very long," he said. "They were short enough that we could get up and over them."

Berkeley said the Eola Hills route "is comparable to what we did down in California, going from Napa Valley over to Sonoma Valley - you cross a ridge, then you ride up the valleys, and those are kind of rolling hills."

Huggins believes Oregon's Willamette Valley offers better bike riding than California's wine country.

"I think the country we have is prettier and more scenic - and there's not as much traffic," he said.

The Bike Oregon Wine Country ride begins at 8 a.m. at Eola Hills Wine Cellars in Rickreall, with Huggins giving an orientation talk that includes a reminder not to go overboard with the wine. "This is a wine-tasting tour, not a wine-drinking tour," he said.

Like most expert wine tasters, Huggins usually spits out the wine after tasting it. But even those who swallow shouldn't see their judgment or riding ability impaired by the tastes they take over an eight-hour day full of food and exercise.

"Most people aren't drinking more than a half glass of wine during the entire day," he said.

Huggins said he's more worried about people who drive their cars from one tasting room to the next because "they're much more likely to linger longer and to drink more."

Not too many people are eager to drink wine at 8:20 a.m., when the bikes begin rolling north on a bike lane on the shoulder of Highway 99. People are just getting warmed up when they pedaled past Flynn Vineyards and Holmesgap Vineyards (neither of which is open for tasting) toward the community of Amity, 13.3 miles away.

There, the riders turn east a short ways to their first water-and-snack stop, then pedal to Hauer of the Dauen Winery at mile 20, where the tasting begins shortly after 10 a.m.

Those who want get their hearts pumping a little harder can take an optional - and significantly steeper - route that swings past Catrall Vineyards, Cuneo Cellars and several other vineyards on Eola Hills Road before rejoining the main route on Lafayette Highway and continuing to Hauer of the Dauen.

From there, it's six miles south to the second tasting room, at Stangland Winery, and three miles more to Witness Tree Vineyard, where lunch was served. Cristom Vineyards is right next door.

Now the riders are in the heart of the Eola Hills grape-growing region, with vineyards stretching across south-facing slopes. Due east of Cristom Vineyards is Bethel Heights Vineyard, where a tasting room is accessible by a short detour on Bethel Heights Road.

The route then zig-zags southward, passing behind Evesham Wood Vineyards and Winery and Redhawk vineyards, neither of which is accessible from the west.

Another water-and-snack stop awaits at the corner of Bush College and Gibson roads, the start of the steepest climb on the "normal" route. Two hard miles later and the route turns south again at Eagle Crest Corner and it's mostly downhill from there. Riders can whiz right past the tasting rooms at Kathken and Orchard Heights wineries if they're not careful.

Old Grove Road takes riders south past Wolf Hill Vineyard to the bike path along Highway 22. A bike overpass carries cyclists to the south side of that highway and, shortly, to Rickreall Road for the final three miles back to the starting point.

Independent cyclists, of course, can start anywhere on the loop if they want to ride the route on their own - or create their own routes using some of the other roads to visit other wineries in the region. Many roads in the Eola Hills are unpaved, so fat-tired bikes would work best.

But ride-it-yourselfers would have to carry their own food and water - and any wine purchases.

"People probably could do it on their own," Huggins said. "But kind of the whole thought behind this is that we have a sag wagon and if anybody wants to order any wine, we pick it up and take on on back to the finish for them."

Sunday's cyclists apparently did find wines that they enjoyed, judging from several cases of wine that were unloaded from the vans at the end of the ride.

Eola Hills charges $50 for its guided wine country tour, which ends with barbecued dinner that usually features salmon plus chicken or steak. And the house wines, of course.

In addition, Terri Gutch and George Thomas, a spokesman for the Epilepsy Foundation, give a slide presentation on their participation in last year's Ride Across America bike ride. Eola Hills donates a portion of each rider's tour fee to the Epilepsy Foundation.

Eola Hills is apparently the only wine-growing area of Oregon with an established bike winery tour. Yamhill County has a 25-mile ride-it-yourself loop tour route that hits eight wineries near Dundee and Lafayette. It includes about six miles of steady climbs, and more than half is on gravel roads.

Huggins said the best two-wheeled wine-touring on paved roads is in the Rickreall-Amity area.

"Everybody's who's done it is has really liked it," he said. "I think it's something that's going to grow."

For more information on Bike Oregon Wine Country, call Eola Hills Wine Cellars at 1-800-291-6730.

CAPTION(S):

A pair of riders pass by the Witness Tree Vineyard in the Eola Hills region west of Salem. A tour of area wineries includes ample stops at tasting rooms. MIKE STAHLBERG / The Register-Guard Participants in the winery bike tour dismount and walk their bikes up the loose gravel driveway leading to the next tasting room.