Through The Walla Walla Grape Vine

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Changing The Wine World on Conan
2007-08-01 16:40:00
Better late than never - -Yesterday, my friend Ryan at Calwineries Blog informed me that the energetic and refreshing wine critic, Gary Vaynerchuk of Wine Library TV, will be a featured guest tonight on Conan O’Brien’s NBC’s Late Night Show. Gary V, whose "Chang ing the Wine World " trademark, was recently in TIME magazine, Wall Street Journal, and NPR to name a few.Gary V represents the new wine faces of the future and takes the "snoot" out of wine drinking. According to Gary V, "Getting everyone to know wine is about personal taste and not what a critic says, and more importantly to try new things and bring younger people into wine." You can view his Episode #177 where he reviews Washington Wines, including those from Walla Walla. I hope I can stay up long enough to catch the show.

Well Traveled Wines - Walla Walla Under the Big Sky
2007-08-01 04:31:00
And indeed it was - the sky was big in Montana! It had been a few years since I had stepped foot in the great state of Montana. US - 93 from Spokane via Coeur d'Alene to Montana was a breathtaking ride through the majestic mountains. The picturesque drive around Flathead Lake brought us to our final destination of Big Fork.Big Fork is located in the mountains of northwestern Montana with an altitude of 2,900 feet. The town wraps around the crystal blue bay of Flathead Lake. With more than 180 miles of shoreline, Flathead Lake is the largest natural freshwater lake west of the Mississippi. The charming town of Big Fork has a western setting with art galleries, fine restaurants, live theatre and of course, shopping. My cousin and her husband live two miles from the quaint little town and of course we couldn’t resist a stop in the "city" for the men in my life to pick up their quota of interesting brews. When in Montana you drink Montana brew. However, that was not the case when it ...
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On Vacation - Big Blue Sky!
2007-07-19 16:03:00
Every three years we have a family reunion camp-out. Usually we camp at family property outside of Dayton, WA near Ski Blue wood. This year, we will be at family property near Big Fork, MT at Flathead Lake. Our reunions are always camp-outs with a variety of tents, travel trailers and luxury motor homes. Me? I like my tent. I have a designer mauve-colored tent that sleeps four, but fits my queen size air mattress just perfect. You see - while I love to camp, I can still be a bit of a diva.One of the reunion events that we look forward to is the family fund raiser auction on Saturday night. People bring items to donate for the auction and the proceeds go to our family fund. The fund pays for things like port-o-potties, paper plates, cups, and other things that we collectively need. The auction items are so great and always so creative, that it is difficult to chose what and how many to bid on. From handmade quilts, crafted decorative wood items, gourmet packaged foods from touristy ar...
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The Grapes Do The Talking At Mannina Cellars
2007-07-18 15:59:00
Every so often I will make a prediction, and when I do my prediction comes true. My predictions are always positive. My motto is, you don't need to make a negative prediction about anybody or anything -- the Law of Karma takes care of it all. My paternal great-grandmother was a midwife with lots of tales and remedies from the back woods. About three years ago, one of my maternal aunts said to me, "You have the gift, don’t you?" She was referring to a trait she felt in our family – being psychic (or maybe just looney). But as I have discovered in life, it’s a tough position to tell someone, "I told you so." Heh.My latest prediction? Don Redman of Mannina Cellars is going to join the ranks of one of the top winemakers in Walla Walla.With a background in chemistry, Don’s approach to his craft of winemaking is to create the perfect environment where grapes can make their journey to wine with as little human intervention as possible. This approach results in vineyard-driven wine...
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The 500th Washington Winery - Sweet Valley Wines
2007-07-17 16:24:00
There has been a lot of press recently about the new 500th licensed winery in the state of Washing ton and especially the news that it will be located in Walla Walla! But out of all of those press releases, how many of them have actually tasted the 500th winery’s first release? Well, we did!Double Barrel Red Blend - 2005 is the first release for Sweet Valley Wines , the 500th winery to be licensed in the State of Washington. We visited with owner/partner of Sweet Valley Wines, David McDaniels, as we enjoyed this distinguished table blend. Keeping true to the sweetest valley around, only Walla Walla Valley grapes from Forgotten Hills, Les Collines, and Va Piano were used. 55% Merlot, 43% Cabernet Sauvignon with a skoosh of Syrah (2%) was blended to make this everyday, but bold sipping wine. Lots of fruit, like a mouthful of dark cherries, but still enough tannins that you could cellar this wine for a couple of years. Fruit and tannins are balanced with a nutmeg and peppery finish. Do...

They're here! Go to the light, Catie Ann!
2007-07-13 15:40:00
What happens when an Eastern Washington Wine blogger meets up with a Western Washington Wine blogger? Lots of opinions get tossed back and forth, lots of chatter fills the air, and a whole lot of tasting of some of the best wines in the world gets done, that's what happens! Best of all for this Eastern Washington wine blogger, I learned to love Walla Walla all over again, as I was able to see Walla Walla through the eyes of the Western Washington Wine blogger, Gene Stein, known as the Seattle Wine Blogger, his wife Diane, and their friends Bob and Kathy Tovey from Bend, Oregon. The crew was in town a little while ago to taste the local product, and I was invited to join them. Dr. Stein is a wine writer, wine educator, wine judge and former publisher of Northwest Consumer's Wine Guide, and his friend Bob Tovey was the Oregon correspondent for a consumer wine guide. I was born and raised in Walla Walla, and I have many fond memories dating back to the late fifties and early sixties ...
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Drenched in Greatness - aˋMaurice
2007-07-12 15:23:00
First of all, it is worth the drive. Of course, what am I talking about? Everything in Walla Walla, is no further than a 15 minute drive from the heart of downtown.The winery and 13-acre vineyard of aˋMauri ce is located in the Upland area of Mill Creek. Besides the appropriate growing conditions, you can almost reach out and touch the panoramic view of the multi-colored foothills of the Blue Mountains. One is surrounded in tranquility. If there is a distinguished nose coming from a wine, it is exciting to me. It makes me want to learn everything about that wine. And no – not every wine will have a dominant aromatic nose that reaches beyond the glass.The first release of aˋMaurice Premier Red Blend - 2004 is such a wine. 49% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot, 24% Cabernet Franc, and 3% Malbec were hand-picked, carefully sorted, then crushed and fermented in small lots and later aged in mostly French oak. The result is an aromatic wine with the Malbec reaching out beyond the glass, i...

The Black Wine
2007-07-10 16:04:00
When winemaker, Troy Ledwick of Hence Cellars told me that their "Hence Cellars Walla Walla Estate Malbec - 2005 is just the s---!" I wondered - - is this word short for "shiznit?" Troy says that when he was asked to make wine for Hence Cellars, his only instructions were to make GREAT wine! With two vintages behind him, Troy believes that the wines are on their way to becoming what he was instructed to makeThree separate Estate vineyard blocks of Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Malbec, make up the Estate Wine s for Hence Cellars. There is approximately one vineyard acre of Malbec that was planted in 2001 on a slope facing south with high drainage and alkilide soil. There wasn't much attention given to this vineyard, since it was on the far side of the property. With the 2004 frost it suffered some damage. In 2005, 1,100 lbs of Malbec was harvested with a brix of 24 and pH at 3.67. Troy said he could tell right from the beginning that the dark color and peppery aroma was a clue to hi...
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Wine Tastings Gone Wild!
2007-07-09 15:29:00
This morning the New York Times reported in their dining and wine section, New York Wine ries Face Tastings Gone Wild .NY Times writer, Corey Kilgannon reports that the North Fork of Long Island, New York has been fighting for 35 years to be recognized as a bona fide wine region. Washington State has been in the same fighting ring for almost the same length of time, as both states have been working hard to be recognized as quality wine producers. But for this tourist season in New York, visitors are being greeted with signs in front of wineries bearing messages such as “No Buses,” “No Limos.”For New York wineries, groups in limosines represents intoxicated visitors who have little or no regard for the wines they are tasting, let alone other tasting room guests and property. At this time the state of New York is the nation’s third-largest producer of wine grapes, after California and Washington State. With Washington state being the second-largest, are we not too far behind t...

A New and Award-Winning Look for Basel Cellars
2007-07-03 15:26:00
Basel Cellars Estate Winery, which was named by Sunset Magazine as "The 2005 Wine Destination of the Year", still has their ultra-premium wines, fine accoutrements and still located in the ever-spectacular 9600 sq. ft. subterranean structure that was modeled after the famous Chateau Mouton Rothschild in the Pauillac appellation of Bordeaux, but it's their website that has the new look.Bob Silver, Senior Vice President and General Manager, from the PR agency of MWW Group, recently shared with me that their creative services team, led by director Rich Patterson, won a Platinum Hermes Award for its innovation redesign of the Basel Cellars web site. The Hermes Creative Awards are an international competition for creative professionals. Entries come from corporate marketing and communication departments, advertising agencies, PR firms, design shops, production companies, web based innovators and freelancers.Basel Cellars enlisted the MWW Group - Seattle, last year to help them revise th...
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A Mouse in the House at Walla Walla Village Winery
2007-06-29 15:42:00
I was 10 years old when I first saw a Stanley Mouse creation. In fact, that's exactly what it was: a mouse. Well, actually, it was a rat -- a "rat fink," in fact. Mouse's popular "Rat Fink" character, borrowed (or perhaps stolen) and then made famous by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, enlivened my brother Terry's hot rod magazines. He was 16 years old, and other Rat Fink characters, in sticker form, decorated Terry's first car, a 1951 green Chevy two-door sedan. She had "three on the tree" (for you youngsters, that means a three-gear manual shift on the steering column) and six cylinders, with baby moon hub caps and a jacked up front end with spring spacers so it rode high in the front. Our dad loved that car and would invent reasons to take it out for a spin. This was all many baby-moon hubcaps ago, alas, when Walla Walla's drive-ins buzzed with car hops and boys in their rides dragged down Main Street between midnight and dawn.When I turned 16 myself, I saw Mouse's work again -- but di...
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Trapper Red - Fort Walla Walla Cellars
2007-06-25 16:21:00
At the risk of sounding like a talking parrot - - I always say, if you want a good wine and a good value ($20 and under), check out the red table blends from Walla Walla Valley. Here is another example of what I am talking about:Trapper Red - 2004 from Fort Walla Walla Cellars is a blend of 56% Merlot and 44% Cabernet Sauvignon. And this isn't the "leftover" wine, either. Grapes were hand-picked and purchased from the Crawford Vineyard in Prosser specifically for Fort Walla Walla Cellar's very first red table blend. Fort Walla Walla Cellars focused just as much attention on their table wine as they do their higher priced varietals or blends. Grapes were de-stemmed and lightly crushed. Fermented in small 1/2 ton fermentation bins for about nine days. This Bordeaux-style red received a total of four rackings during the eighteen months of barrel aging and was not filtered prior to bottling. And how was it? What a great nose! The nose presented to me a lot of my favorite things I look...
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Cooking Through The Walla Walla Grape Vine
2007-06-20 16:29:00
It was Virginia Woolf who said, "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." Guests who has stayed at the Green Gables Inn Bed and Breakfast will tell you that they slept well and most of all, dined well.Owners of this 1909 Craftsman style mansion, Margaret and Jim Buchan, along with Chef Caren, are up before the sun to create not only delicious and hearty, but eye-appealing breakfasts for their overnight guests. This five bedroom (plus carriage house which sleeps six) mansion was built for entertaining. An inscription by Ralph Waldo Emerson is carved on the fireplace mantle. It still welcomes guests today as it did back in the early 1900's, “The Ornaments Of A House Are The Friends That Frequent It.”This month Margaret and Caren have chosen a dish that not only is terrific for breakfast, but I would serve it for noon brunch or a light dinner. Served with a green salad, it would make for a perfect light summer meal. With the melted Pecorino Romano ...
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Wine Blogging Wednesday #34 - Welcome Fellow Bloggers!
2007-06-14 08:00:00
My Washington Cabernet Sauvignon summary reads like the old carol, "Twelve Days of Christmas:32 Blog entries45 Reviewed wines3 International blogs9 Cabernet blends and one Merlot17 From Walla Walla and - - One Riesling from Chateau Ste. Michelle Thanks to everyone for their entries! The results were wondeful and even better than I hoped for! Cheers and thanks again! C~ (6/19/07)Greetings to my fellow wine (and foodie) bloggers!I was thrilled to be asked to host Wine Blogging Wednesday #34 for the month of June! This month's theme is Cabernet Sauvignon from the State of Washington. Known for its warm and extended growing days with cool summer nights, Cabernet Sauvignon loves the climate of Washington State.I also challenged my fellow bloggers to see if they could discover a Washington Cab that was not from Ste. Michelle or Columbia Crest -- not that there is anything wrong with these wines, but they are largely produced and distributed. I wanted to challenge wine lovers to truly dig...
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Wine Blogging Wednesday #34 - Washington State Cabernet Sauvignon
2007-06-13 03:38:00
Cabernet Sauvignon to the east – Cabernet Sauvignon to the west! Over 100 labels of Cabernet Sauvignon surround me and all within a mere 15 minute drive or less! I live in a valley with over 100 licensed wineries and the area is full of local Cabernet Sauvignon! WBW #34 is almost here and yours truly, along with gentle guidance from Lenn Thompson of Lenndevours, has chosen the Wine Blogging Wednesday theme as Cabernet Sauvignon from the "Evergreen" State of Washington . Washington State is home to lighthouses, rain and Alpine-like forests, deserts painted with sagebrush, volcanoes, majestic rivers, java-joints, micro-breweries, and most of all, over 500 wineries with over 31,000 acres of grapes making Washington State the second wine producer in the nation. Cabernet Sauvignon was originally planted sporadically around the Columbia Valley starting in 1963. In fact, the wine region of Washington State comprehends the same latitudes as the southern parts of Burgundy, all of the Loire...
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