At Hiyu Wine Farm, the goat that grazed on the fennel last spring becomes merguez sausage, served with herbed yogurt. The fennel garnishes Dungeness crab, brought in from the Oregon Coast. The eggplant in agrodolce shines like the strong Hood River summer sun that fed it. Most of the ingredients start out as supporting characters in the farm’s permaculture approach to growing grapes for its uniquely creative and complex field-blend wines. 

“When you go to a winery and you just taste wine, and there’s no food, I just didn’t get it,” says Hiyu cofounder Nate Ready. “I didn’t understand the attraction.” Once a Master Sommelier working at the country’s best restaurants, he always considered wine in the context of a meal. Only when Oregon laws changed to allow wineries to serve food in 2013 did he even offer tastings at Hiyu. Paired snacks gave way to full meals, and lunch became the focus at the on-site Wine Tavern.

Two hours west, in another section of Oregon’s wine country, the marquee culinary offering at Antica Terra is titled A Very Nice Lunch—and it won chef Timothy Wastell a 2025 James Beard Award. As at Hiyu, the thoughtful and seasonal six-course meal is impeccably paired but informal, precisely reflective of the winemaking and region.

These lunches are designed for lounging, for long, slow afternoons sipping wines and eating foods that precisely capture the terroir and ethos of Oregon, notably casual and free from any snobbery or expectations on the diners. Hiyu and Antica Terra, two of Oregon’s top wineries, both found the ideal format for sharing their world-class wines in welcoming travelers to eat, drink, and while away the heart of the day.

“It’s been kind of cool to have this place where people still have lunch,” says Ready. “People commit, they make reservations way in advance, they sit down for like two and a half hours.”

It’s the kind of meal Ready remembers eating while visiting France as a teenager. “It felt totally bizarre, as someone who grew up in a suburban American neighborhood,” he says. Passing the cows, pigs, and chickens to sit down in a barn and eat a meal without ordering was confusing—and astounding.

Pigs snuffle about the cardoon bushes at Hiyu, and cows meander among the vines up the hill. Pastel flowers poke out from the dozens of shades of green, from the pale leaves hanging on trees to the near-fluorescent of the low grasses. More than 100 different grapes grow here, which Ready makes into 40 or 50 wines each year, each one distinct and fascinating.

Almost everything not grown, raised, or foraged on the farm comes from close by, maybe as far as the coast for seafood, hewing tightly to the winery’s hyperlocal and microseasonal values. Ready’s winemaking philosophy centers on creating the right mix of interspersed plants and animals to shape the final product. The lunches follow suit. “Because the ingredients are so good, we don’t have to do very much for it to taste amazing,” he says.

Antica Terra’s lunch involves somewhat more intervention, fitting given winemaker Maggie Harrison’s impressive talent for blending. Wastell dabs Hokkaido scallops with local wasabi and stuffs diced Oregon albacore inside lemon balm leaves. Osetra caviar and Alaskan spot prawns share the menu with housemade prosciutto draped over the freshest stone fruit.

Calling it “A Very Nice Lunch” undersells the experience, with its private barrel room setting, the wine pairings from around the world that give context to the ones from Antica Terra itself, and the first course that’s really a parade of many small dishes. 

Unfortunately, “A Culinary Invitation to the Inside of the Winemaker’s Brain” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, though that is what makes lunch at both Hiyu and Antica Terra so incredibly special. A reservation at either buys an afternoon immersed in the scents and views that shaped the wines, a taste of philosophy and terroir wrapped in the packaging of some of the state’s best meals.