Golden Valley Brewery & Restaurant

Peter and Celia Kircher were going to open a brewpub in Portland at 2nd and Yamhill. They lost the lease. They already had a vineyard in Yamhill County, planted in 1989, so they moved the whole concept out to McMinnville instead. The Golden Valley wine brand launched in 1992, the brewery followed in 1993, and by 1998 they’d sold the vineyard to Domaine Serene to focus on the pub. Celia named it for her native Wales.

It was the twelfth post-Prohibition microbrewery in Oregon, opening in a renovated 1920s warehouse when McMinnville was still a farming town and years before Oregon beer showed up on menus nationally. The Kirchers first bought a used system of converted dairy tanks from a Canadian brewery. After Peter attended the Seibel Institute for Brewing Sciences in Chicago in 1993, he decided consistent quality was impossible with open fermenters, sold the whole thing, and bought the system still in use today, built by JV Northwest in Canby.

The room reflects the building. Original Douglas fir post and beam timbers, cozy booths and long tables, stained glass nooks, and a 24-foot bartop salvaged from Portland’s historic Hoyt Hotel. There’s a pub, a dining room, a game room, an outdoor beer garden, and private banquet space.

The kitchen has run a scratch, local program since 1993, with its own garden supplying the restaurant — green beans, chard, kale, lettuce, tomatoes, beets, zucchini, peppers, herbs, and the flowers on the tables. From 2003 the Kirchers also ran Angus Springs Ranch, 76 acres northwest of town where cattle grazed on spent brewery grain, with beef dry-aged at Carlton Farms. That program ended in 2024, though the local sourcing continues. All this predated the farm-to-table movement by years.

Ten house beers on tap, a full bar, local wines, and a full menu all day. Red Thistle ESB and Chehalem Mountain IPA are the flagships, with TannenBomb the winter warmer regulars wait for. Their son Alex started with a high school internship dredging mozzarella sticks and is now on the management team. A second location opened in Beaverton in 2012.