Wine Weekend

Last evening, we returned from our annual trip to the Yakima Valley Region in the great state of Warshington. We go down and buy grapes for our quasi-professional wine making hobby.

This year, we made it down for "The Crush" weekend, a yearly festival of wines and wine making and most importantly, wine drinking.

Both Susan and I made an extra special effort to not drink too much thereby causing one to return to the hotel room by 2PM and nap for the rest of the day. I did a lot of spitting.

I think we visited 7 or 8 wineries between 11:00 and 5:00 on Saturday. We spent the first part of the day roaming around the region known as Rattlesnake Hills. We went to many wineries that we had been to before and at least two that were new to us. We ended up in Prosser, which seemed to be the epicenter of all the Crush activity.

At the end of the day, we returned to our Bed and Breakfast town of Sunnyside and went to dinner at Snipes Mountain. This is another regular stop for us, as they have really good wood fired pizza.

We returned to the room and watched "The Road to Perdition". We had seen it before, although Susan swears she had not. For me, it was much more enjoyable the second time.

We always stay at the Sunnyside Inn, in part because they give us a great breakfast. That was the case again this year on both Saturday and Sunday.

We began our Sabbath wine tasting adventure at 14 Hands. Susan bought a bottle there to start us off for the day. Our next stop was one of our favorites, DavenLor. We always return with a resealable bottle which they switch out for a full bottle of Recovery Red.

By then, we were starting to get burned out on wine tasting but we still had some places to visit. We always go to Kestrell because we are in their wine club and always buy a case of "Lady in Red". It a good wine that ends up costing about eight bucks a bottle.

By then it was 1:00 and we decided it was time to go pick up our grapes.

I haven't mentioned that we were accompanied on this trip by Susan's friend Ellen. We got Ellen involved in wine making several years ago and this will be her first attempt at making wine from scratch. In other words, from grapes rather than a kit.

We are buying from a new source this year since our old source, Patricia O'Brien, retired and sold her farm.

We ended up buying from her nephew, Chad. We agreed to meet at 3:00 for the pickup. We were hoping we could arrive early. On the way, we decided to stop at one last winery, Barrel Springs, because this was another new one for us and it was on the way.

It was a very nice place and they paired up a bunch of cheeses with their wine. They also had a feature that caught my attention enough to take one of the few pictures I took this weekend.

They had a piano bar similar to mine and it was for sale for about $2,000.00. Theirs was different from mine in that they left the harp in the piano, which make it substantially heavier. It also cuts down on the room you have inside to store bottle.

But it also had a beautiful wine rack built into the bottom of the piano. It was very cool and the workmanship was excellent.

From Barrel Springs, we drove another four miles out into the plains of Prosser to the O'Brien Farms location where we were to pick up our grapes.

We got there about 1:30

We arrived to an empty farm. Nobody was there. We decided in the interest of time and in order to get Ellen back to town that we would load all our luggage into Ellens car in order to make room for all the ice chests we needed for the grapes.

Then we all drove to one last winery, Terra Blanca. This is a winery with ridiculously over priced bottles because they have to pay for the magnificent building they have erected.

We went in for a tasting because it was part of the passport we purchased and then we sent Ellen on her way back to Spokane. 

Susan and I returned to O'Brien Farms only to find it still empty. We decided to wait for half an hour for Chad to show up. It only took five minutes.Chad arrived and I wrote him a check for $200.00. We transferred the grapes into the various ice chests and where on our way.

Then we drove to one last winery because Susan wanted to use the bathroom. This was another favorite of ours called Chandler Reach.

It's located right off the freeway and is really a nice place.

During our tasting, we discovered that they may be willing to sell small batches of grapes. I got the card of the General Manager and will contact her in the next couple of days.

We got in the car and began our two and a half hour return to Spokane. Ellen had stopped at the house and dropped off all our stuff. We had the grapes which we will be crushing on Wednesday.

It was a great weekend but boy was I beat! That's why we only do this once a year.