Wineries Go to Town

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Byline: Joe Mosley The Register-Guard

Your next Lane County winery tour doesn't have to involve a road map and a full tank of gas.

Alan Mitchell and Bruce Biehl would suggest a city bus token instead. Even a good pair of walking shoes.

They're a pair of Oregon wine industry veterans who are bucking the bucolic tradition of countryside wineries by bringing their product within reach of the people. They have quietly drawn Eugene's Whiteaker neighborhood into the loop of local wine production with a pair of small, well-received urban wineries - each with several regional awards to its credit - operating within a few city blocks of each other.

And if in-town wineries are a trend, Eugene is way ahead of the Northwest's larger cities - on a per capita basis, anyway.

Portland also has just a pair of urban wineries: Urban Wine Works and Hip Chicks Do Wine. And the Seattle area has a trio: Chatter Creek Winery and Cadence Winery, both in Seattle, and Tukwila's Owen-Sullivan Winery.

But Eugene's wineries have something the others don't. They're close enough geographically and philosophically - with an emphasis on low-volume, high-quality products and regularly-staffed tasting rooms - to create a symbiotic bond.

"We generate more …