Woman Who Wine/Whine

Well come along with me for my second outing with a group of ladies who have gathered together once a month to explore our wonderful and vast wine region in south eastern Washington State. We have dubbed ourselves "Women Who Wine/Whine ."

The Columbia Vally region lies along the same latitude as the great Burgundy and Bordeaux regions of France--with rich volcanic soil, and perfect temperature for growing the best wine grapes. In about a 60 mile radius from my front door we have over 80 wineries to choose from.

We gathered at a parking lot today and we're whisked away to an unknown destination by our fearless leader Kay Syrah. She has the unique opportunity of meeting many folks in the local wine industry when she is working for Tapteil Winery in their tasting room. Today we gave her another nickname "The Connector" It turns out she has arranged a meeting/tour with a fairly new winery in town. So new I can't even find it on the maps. A large California winery Pacific Rim decided to move a major part of their wine production facilities up to this region to buy, grow and bottle our local grapes. Read their story to find out why, something about our wonderful terra.

Scott Kopf the Lab Manager/Enologist teaches us about his job. He takes us right into his laboratory, hands us some glasses and proceeds to take us around the warehouse tasting little sips of great vats of wine in progress.

Each one of the yellow bottles represents a batch of wine, that is in the making. Everyday Scot keeps a close watch on the wine. I loved this part of the tour! This is a job for some reason I think I would find fascinating.

We tried a Riesling, Chien Blanc, and a wonderful Raspberry Port. The port was just a little experiment they were trying out. One of the great advantages of visiting these local wineries I am finding out is that many of the designer wines never hit the major markets. They can only be purchased directly from the winery. We have his name and he has ours, and when they go to bottle that heavenly stuff, we are on the call list for one of the first cases off the production line. Fun way to start our morning.
We then head off to Processor for some shopping. We visited a local sweet shop called Chukar Cherries. They had everything you could think of to do with cherries and chocolate, and then some. I tasted a cherry chutney, and cherry salsa that were unique and special.
We headed across the street for a stop at Bonnie's Vine and Gift Shop and a tasting. We have tasting rooms around here, like Seattle has coffee shops...they are everywhere. Today we were after some of the unique and lesser known wineries. So out we headed to find a a small winery called Pontin Del Roza

I was hoping to taste some robust Italian style wines here. To be honest I can't say that this was my favorite...matter of fact I ended up purchasing a courtesy bottle of White Riesling. The reds were disappointing to me. Just trying to keep it real.

Can you believe we are only half way through our day. Stay tuned for Part II