Wine Bloggers Conference ’10 Off the Bus Tour

by on Mar 31, 2010

Many times in life it is better to be lucky than good. That is true in Las Vegas, though a little card counting doesn’t hurt, it explains in large part the life curve of many politicians, and it was certainly the case for me when I met Barb on the back deck of Terry’s house several years ago while I was helping move some furniture. In my wine drinking and blogging efforts I was fortunate (I guess) to stumble upon winechater.com and learn about the Wine Bloggers Conference that was planned for June, 2010 in Walla Walla, Washington.

At the time I didn’t know there was any such animal as a WBC and only vaguely even knew what blogging itself was. I had been mulling over putting down on paper or keyboard mine and Barb’s Washington wine experiences and had done a quite a bit of “research” one taste, one bottle at a time on our topic. After reading a little about the WBC-W2 inertia sort of took over and I signed up for the event because it looked like a fun time and a neat way to explore Walla Walla wines. That’s actually one area of Washington we hadn’t explored much though we’d been to the western outskirts on one Sunday drive and had heard many good things about the wineries and wines made there. That carrot, and fear of embarrassment since I’d signed up as a wine blogger, spurred me to learn the basic mechanics of interweb blogging and I started cranking out this stuff like what you are currently reading.
The fact that the wine blogging world, nascent beast that it is, was descending upon my home turf and would be visiting many of the places I’d already visited and have gotten to know slowly began dawning on me. Lucky me! The WBC or Bust bus tour was announced (see the neat logo with the bus at the right of my blog page.) This tour would start in Seattle and end in Walla Walla and unless they were planning on going down I-5 to Portland then coming around the horn at Umatilla, even without a GPS I knew they’d be driving the Yak.
Then the WBC conference itself announced its pre-conference and post-conference excursions to the Yakima Valley and Red Mountain respectively. I signed Barb and me up for the pre- and post- excursions right away. Even without a detailed itinerary, I knew I’d have a chance to observe the observers in a sort of inside the looking glass manner. Fifty or so people who endeavored to do what I was doing would be walking the vineyard rows I drive past every day and bellying up to the same tasting room bars that have my elbow prints permanently embossed.
When the final itinerary for the WBC or Bust tour was announced, I noticed (again unless helicopters or off terrain vehicles were to be used) that the bus of WBC Busters would be passing our mailbox (it’s sitting on top of an old wine barrel BTW) and in front of our house and that this was my chance to show off the local colors. A banner for State Route 241 was contemplated (but WADOT denied the permit), a suggestion was made to provide a full moon but I was confused since the bus would be passing in broad daylight, and Barb (again) refused to dress up in the Kay Kay Yak Yak Yak costume and stand at the end of the driveway offering free wine pours from the costume’s udders. Apparently there is a limit to our love.
One thought did occur to me that might work though. Starting where the Buster Bus was entering Eastern Washington, they’d be going to Cave B near the town of George. I could write blogs about the wines, wineries, and vineyards that this magical bus would stop at (or mainly pass) on it journey south, then east, then west, then back south, then west again, then back east again on it’s way through our neighborhood. Believe me, it may not seem like it’s hard to get lost when there is only one road, but we’ve seen countless cars and trucks stopped near our driveway and the intersection nearby that have obviously gotten disoriented by the twists and turns and ups and downs that are required to navigate this part of Eastern Washington.
Since I can do what I want here, I think I’ll start my Off the Bus tour a little further north up the Columbia River at what I think is one of the most spectacular view wineries I’ve ever visited called White Heron west of Quincy, then pick up the bus route at Cave B, and follow it across the Wahluke Slope, through the mid Columbia and Wautoma Valleys into the Yakima Valley, and past Red Mountain to the Tri-Cities. When the bus crosses the Snake River, I’ll turn it over to Catie or Paul or any of the other fine wine bloggers based in the land of Big Onions and repetitious Wallas.

I’ll try to stay close to the mapped bus route with a minor detour here or there, and for certain there will be an erratic post or two about the PANGANIBAN shenanigans, but I’d expect this journey to carry me though the months of April, May, and into Mid-June when Barb and I will be thumbing a ride on the bus as it makes its way to DuBrul vineyard where the WBC or Bust Bus and Pre-WBC Yakima Valley excursions will collide on June 24.

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To Air is Human – Tasawik 2005 Merlot – Columbia Valley

by on Mar 27, 2010

I’ll apologize in advance.  There’s a good chance I’m going to totally geek out in this post.  Some of what I’ll write may not be accurate, or even close, but it’ll be hard to tell because sometimes I start speaking in chemicaleze or acronyms that are part science, part whimsy.  I first wooed Barb with some love notes that I subtitled Romance for Science Geeks, so she’ll understand.  The rest of you are on your own.

 

When I look into a wine glass, swirl its contents under my nose, or watch a carboy of murky must bubbling away, sometimes I start thinking about chemistry.  I can’t help it, the chemistry of wine and winemaking is a scientist’s fantasy.  You start with a natural organic material (much like crude oil or corn or cow’s milk) and under certain conditions of temperature, pressure, the presence or absence of oxygen containing air and some smart single cell fungi, magic happens.   At the end of the process you get to drink the elixir that can turn a Dr. Jekyll into a Mr. Hyde, can turn a double bagger into a fiancé, and can even make a total nerd with a pocket protector and a slide rule get asked to dance by the cheerleader.  (I suspect Julia Roberts was heavily under wine’s influence during her Lyle Lovett phase).

One of the phases of wine chemistry that is most fascinating to me is what happens when you open the bottle.  Wine is composed of about 85-87% dihydrogen oxide, typically 12-14% ethyl alcohol, and I don’t know, but I’d guess less than 1% “other stuff”.  That other stuff is the magic and is composed of hundreds, maybe thousands, of long and short chain double-bonded, triple-bonded, and ringed organic molecules that started out in the skins of the grape or in the nutrient starved soil next to vine roots and have evolved into maybe something else in the bottle.  They continue to bump and grind, mutate and mature, get excited and calm down the entire time they sit in oak barrel, then the inert glass bottle, whether it be two days, six months, or sixty years.  They have enthalpy, entropy, and potential energy all affected by the cork and the sun and the cool basement walls.  They have color and flavor and aroma.

When the cork is popped and the elixir poured the fun REALLY starts.  Life giving oxygen is reintroduced to this stew that has been slowly brewing.  Aldehydes become ketones, acids become alcohols, esters become ethers, and Henry’s and Chuck’s laws become paramount as the surface tension explodes these chemicals into the surrounding daylight where they flee lighter than air towards the rim of the decanter or glass. What looks like the passive surface of the Moon is really an exploding Sun. 

A nostril or tastebud awaits.    These moments are fleeting but the human receptical can detect these changes in the fluid and the molecules that interact and react on the humanoid detector send signals to its brain.  Memories are evolved from the darkest reaches.  Soil, candy, vegetables, clay, spice, flowers, diesel, rocks, trees, chalk, sewer funk, fruit.  All things that life has trained us to associate with these senses and things we call aroma and flavor can be found.

There’s at least a small probability I was the only one contemplating these variables when I joined the WAmerlot virtual tasting this past Thursday afternoon.   Josh Wade of drinknectar.com had used the power of Al Gore’s toy and wireless communicators to notify, allure, and organize a gathering of wine drinkers from acoss this country, and possibly others around the world, to find a Washington Merlot and tell Miles and Alex Payne to stick it sideways.

Barb was working late, so I was McCauley Culkining it.  I picked a Tasawik 2005 Merlot that we had picked up a year or so ago at the winery’s tasting room, Studio B, Winemaker’s loft, Prosser, Benton County, Washington, U.S. of A.  When we had first tasted this wine there, the server showed us a device we hadn’t seen before.  It was called a Vinturi and it performed magic on a newly opened bottle of the Merlot.  She let us taste the difference side by side.  It is obvious.  Oxidation quickly changes the flavor.  A slow decant does the same or similar thing, but the harsh excited veggie notes of a tightly wound Merlot evolve into the more relaxed creme de menthe.

I fully believe the Vinturi and Soirée work and have their place, but I still like to rely on a slightly slower partial pressure exchange at 14.7 psia and a three or six inch circle of liquid to gas interface afforded by a decanter or wine glass.  From these vessels, the nose can savor the wafts as they slowly change over time; not the wham bam of a venturi scrubber at terminal velocity.

The Tasawik Merlot according to my Twitter notes:

5:25 PDT – Tasawik popped and poured a small one once sip. Decanting rest.

5:27 PDT – Tasawik color is medium dark burgundy. Nose is still opening and changing every few seconds on the sniff.

5:29 PDT – lavender vanilla cherry blossoming on nose

5:50 PDT – Tasawik reaching full octane on nose. Huge Cherry with some spice and mint. Prior veggie blown away

5:55 PDT – Full body silky smooth touch of mint still on finish. 45 minutes decanted.

6:34 PDT – developing some cocoa and mineral notes 1:30 after decant.

In this chronology, you can see my lack of clock reading skills, but you can also track my impressions as I smelled, then tasted this wine.  Barb arrived home around 7:30 and because I had misread a simple note in an e-mail, I forgot to pick up the pizza and I thought she was bringing it.  Oh well, the wine was just as good with cellophane wrapped peanut butter crackers.

If you’ve made it this far find a chemist or geologist or physician or computer engineer.  Ask them how they think about food or music or literature.  When your eyes glaze over, have another glass of Washington Merlot and give them a kiss.

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98, 99, 100- Ready or Not, Here We Come!

by on Mar 23, 2010

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, or if you’ve been anywhere within earshot of any of our family for the past nine months or so, you know that our youngest daughter Jennifer, aka Jo, is getting married this coming July. As part of the pre-wedding hoopla, Jo decided to have her bachelorette party as a tour of Washington Wine Country. I thought bachelor and bachelorette parties happened the night before the wedding and involved embarassing hired help, but apparently the times and the customs; they have changed.

Therefore in the spirit of due diligence, and in fairness to any unsuspecting wineries out there, here is fair warning of the proposed itinerary. We have notified some of these people ahead of time by e-mail or voice during our recent tours, but if any one of these (wisely) close their doors, any other wineries or party-like establishment near this path could be added to the list. The name of the journey will have meaning to some. I’ll add that Barb wrote this, so this is her first guest appearance as a Yak Yak blogger (Thanks honey!) Here it is:

P A N G A N I B A N

Portland And Nearby Glamorous Areas Nuptial Initiation Bash And Nightcrawl  – April 8, 2010 – April 11,2010

Thursday – arrive at Portland Airport at 7:10 pm. You will be greeted by DaddyYakYak, your Sommelier/Designated Driver/Tour Guide/Chaperone and be transported to the hotel in a Bandago Dodge Sprinter motor van (aka the PanganiVan) featuring comfortable seating for 9, Xbox 360 gaming system, LCD Video entertainment, WI-FI access, and surround sound stereo with individual wireless headphones. We will check into The Sheraton near the airport, change into your fancy duds and have dinner at one of the excellent restaurants in Portland (bride’s choice). After dinner, we will drop you at any of the clubs in Portland (Jo has the links, her picks). The old folks will nap in the van as we are way too old to go clubbing. We hope to get you back to the hotel by 1 am as we need to be up and ready to go by 9 am on Friday.

Friday – up and in the PanganiVan by 9 am! You can grab a cup of coffee to go in the lobby if needed and I will provide muffins, juice, and yogurt in the van to eat on the way so you can squeeze out every last second of sleep. We will drive from Portland up the Columbia River Gorge (don’t forget your cameras, it’s a gorgeous drive) to Cascade Cliffs, home of the Goat Head Red that will be served at the wedding. Jared will give us a tour of the winery, the vineyards, and of course pour us some wine to taste. They are also the tasting room for ‘Naked Winery’. (I will underline the places you can go to a website to check out if you are a planner or care) We will then stop at Maryhill Winery (you can buy their wines at some stores in the Midwest, we have bought it at The Decanter in Decatur) and then Columbia Crest (one of, if not the largest in Washington, it’s available in stores everywhere) where we will have a picnic lunch on the patio.

Lunch will consist of antipasto trays of cheeses, salami, crackers, artichoke hearts, peppers, pepperocinis, carrots, cukes, pickles, nuts, perhaps an avocado or two and some sliced fruits. Cookies for dessert. Oh, and water, you’ll need to drink plenty of water!

From Columbia Crest we will head across Horse Heaven to the town of Prosser where we will stop at Alexandria Nicole, home of the Quarry Butte that will be served at the wedding. Then to VineHeart (where the Riesling grapes came from for their wedding wine) and onto Red Mountain where we will stop at Fidelitas and Terra Blanca. Trust us when we say that will be plenty of wine tasting for the day.

We’ll head back to our house where we will have dinner. And of course, more wine! We will make bow tie veggie pasta with a creamy wine cheese sauce. Meat options are grilled shrimps, grilled chicken, or grilled portabella mushroom (just let me know who wants/prefers what as we’ll cook all 3 options). We’ll also have a green salad, bread, and dipping oils. For dessert, Tiramisu.

You can eat, drink, laugh, watch movies, drink, tell stories, laugh, drink whatever til whenever, just be ready to be up and moving again by about 9am Saturday.

Saturday – Waffle Bar for breakfast from 9 am – 10am. Waffles, fruits, homemade jams, syrups, milk, juice, coffee. We will hit the wine trail by 10am. Our first stop will be Steppe Cellars, home of the Gewurztraminer that will be served at the wedding. Then, off to Two Mountain (their Riesling is almost as good as what we made for the wedding!) and Severino, home to one of the red blends that will also be served at the wedding.

We will have lunch on the patio at Severino – ham/turkey/veggie wraps with Gardetto mix, pickles, and some fruit something. I will mix and match the wraps and will keep the veggie ones separate. Please let me know if you hate or can’t/won’t eat cream cheese, avocado, red/yellow peppers, humus, or normal stuff that I would put in a wrap.

After lunch, we will head to Prosser Vintner’s Village where there are 12 or so wineries within walking distance of each other. We will make 2 special stops on the way – one for dessert, and one as a surprise for Jo. You may want to buy something at the surprise stop – email me if you are curious and can keep a secret. At Vintner’s Village, we recommend Maison Bleue, Milbrandt (home of the Chenin Blanc that will be served), Gamache, and Thurston Wolfe (nice dessert wines) but all the places serve good vino. We won’t head home ‘til you guys are done (and some of you will be over done and really baked by this point).

For Saturday’s dinner I need you guys to decide if you’d rather have Taco Bar (meat, beans, chips, lettuce, guacamole, salsa, tortillas, onions, olives, tomatoes, cheese, sour cream, cilantro, etc…) or Shish-ka-Bobs and rice. If you choose shish-ka-bobs we would do red/yellow peppers, tomatoes, onions, mushrooms and then could do either pears, apples, smoked sausage and Merlot sauce or the veggies with meat options of steak, shrimp, chicken, and of course we’d grill Portabellas for the Veggies. So, really 3 choices, pick one as a group – taco bar, shiskas with fruit and merlot sauce, or the 3 meat trio with veggies probably in an Italian marinade. Whatever option you choose, we think a Sundae bar will be fun for dessert – with dessert wine, of course.

Saturday night you can eat, drink, and be merry as late as you want but remember, we have to be in the PanganiVan heading back to Portland by 5am – sorry, it’s a long drive.

Sunday Morning, you can sleep in the van and then again on the plane! We’ll eat breakfast on the way. Back to PDX by 8 am to catch flights away from wine heaven.

A few things to consider –

 · Please remember to use the restrooms at the wineries. We will be going from BFE to Western BFE with not a lot of potty options in between. Sagebrush is very rough on the bottom.

· Drink plenty of water in between wineries and eat snacks too. This really helps from getting plastered so fast.

· Also, it is totally ok to spit or pour out wine you don’t really care for, skip a wine you don’t want and/or so you don’t drink too much too soon. Believe me, we will be visiting enough wineries each day that soberness will not be an issue.

· Dress very casual (except for the Portland dinner). Part of what we love about this area is that it’s a Birkenstock and jeans kinda place, no matter where you go.

 · Most of the wineries offer 2-3 white wines and 3-5 red wines, some more, some less. For example, Severino and Maison Bleue are on the low end, but Columbia Crest or Maryhill will have up to 30 or more different wines for sale and 10-12 available for tasting on any given day (see the note above; you don’t have to taste them all!)

 · If you want to buy wine, white wines are typically $10-$15 per bottle, $20 on the high end. Reds start at $10 and can go as high as $50 with every price point in between. Some really good wines are at all ends of the price range. It’s really about what you like!

 · You might want to bring an extra suitcase for any wine purchases and ask Jo for those packing eggshell thingies they have. That way you will know if they fit in your suitcase and how many bottles you can buy.

· You can have also the wineries ship home to you, but it’s expensive, like $25 for 2–3 bottles so you may as well pay Alaska to check the second bag. Or, just plan on wearing the same clothes all weekend to save room for the wine you buy!

We are really looking forward to helping make Jo’s last bash a blast. We will stay sober (during the daytime) to supervise and ensure that no one gets lost or ends up in the men’s restroom and that everyone gets back on the plane Sunday morning!

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The Source – Columbia Winery 2004 Otis Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon – Yakima Valley

by on Mar 21, 2010

When you sign up on blogger.com to create a blogger profile, you have the option of listing favorite hobbies, music, movies, and books.  If you click on my profile, you’ll see that one of my favorite books is The Source by James Michener.   Michener, if you don’t know, was a writer of historical fiction whose works include Hawaii, Poland, Chesapeake, Texas, and Tales of the South Pacific.  Michener’s big books, and many of them are very long, begin at the dawn of time for a civilization or region of the world and follow a group of families or community through generation after generation, century after century.  They are long books.

If Michener had written a book about Washington and the Pacific Northwest, the Missoula Floods, the Yakama and other native peoples, the volcanoes of the Cascade Range, and Lewis and Clark would likely have played prominent roles.  Into the twentieth century, in addition to Boeing, Microsoft, and Starbucks, there would be a chapter regarding the birth of Washington’s modern wine industry.  There were several pioneers and one the most well regarded was a group of University of Washington professors who started as home winemakers, then bonded as Associated Vintners, and later became Columbia Winery.  The farmers of Eastern Washington that were growing apples, hops, cherries, concord grapes and wheat that tried their hand at vinifera grapes also played a role and one of those early growing pioneers, starting in 1957, was Otis Harlan at what is now Otis’ Vineyard north of Grandview on the Yakima/Benton County Line Road. 

The relationships between the winemakers of Seattle and Western Washington and farmers turned vineyard owners of Eastern Washington are an interesting study.   Having grown up in a rural area and knowing some farmers and having endured university professors and big city folks as well, I can easily imagine the curious appraisals and remarks made after some of these early visits.
For Columbia Winery, the winemaker who made the biggest impact and made the trips across the passes to the vineyards was David Lake, who unfortunately passed away just this past October.  David met Otis Harlan in the late 1970′s and began making single vineyard wines using Otis grapes about that time.   I never met either of these gentlemen, but the fact that their relationship endured for the next thirty years tells me they were likely very dear friends in addition to being business associates.
Since moving to the Yak, I have driven past Otis’ Vineyard many times.  You can tell you’re at Otis by the unique hallmark fan-trained vines (pictured above) and the fact that there is actually a sign telling you where you are.  That’s also something fairly unique to the vineyards of the Yak.  Most of the time you drive past mile after mile of vineyard acres with no signage telling where one vineyard stops and the next anonymous vineyard starts.

This past Christmas, Barb and I made our first trip to Woodinville and visited Columbia Winery’s tasting room.  We tasted their entire line-up and there were a number of wines we might have purchased, but after we tasted a 2004 Otis Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon the choice was easy.  This vintage may have been one of the last wines made by David Lake, we’ll keep looking for future releases, and the grapes were sourced from our neighborhood.  Easy choice.

I took these pictures yesterday and we opened our first bottle of Columbia Winery David Lake Otis Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon today.  The nose is cassis and leather with some floral notes,  midpalate is light to medium body with bacon, smoke and mineral on the finish. This wine is quite elegant, particularly for a Cabernet Sauvignon, and was a perfect compliment to a lightly seasoned ribeye with baked potato and asparagus.

I sometimes ponder what will happen in this new millenium as Washington’s western winemakers and eastern vineyard farmers become the second generation, but this wine is a perfect tribute to its founder winemakers and those who began growing the grapes at The Source.

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Tasting Room Tuesday – Olsen Estates 2007 Merlot – Yakima Valley

by on Mar 19, 2010

One of the great, and often distracting, things about being a wine lover in the middle of wine country are the tasting rooms that most wineries have open daily to the public.  I’ve joked about some of our favorite wineries cutting us off from the tasting room bar and complained about crowded tasting rooms during special weekend events, but make no mistake, tasting rooms are my friend.  In fact, I’ve knocked on so many doors asking about wine tasting possibilities, that some places have put up helpful signs telling me not to bother.

I missed the actual tasting rooms terribly this past winter when a majority in the Yakima Valley were closed.   I’ve been keeping my eyes peeled for the signs of life inside and now that the sandwich boards near the street are proclaiming “Open – Wine Tasting” I am comforted, even though sometimes several days, and maybe once or twice an entire week, will pass when I don’t enter a tasting room.   Sad, I know.

There are many tasting room styles, moods, and set-ups.  Rustic, palatial, sleek, dusty, plush, foo-foo, minimalist,…  The list of feng-shui could go on forever.  There are also good times and not-so-good times to visit a tasting room.  For us, that timing depends a lot on why we’re going there.  If it’s a party or if we want to talk to other trail hoppers, go on event weekend, or any weekend during summer in the Yak.  We’ve often times found ourselves seeing the same people at 2-3 stops in a day, and usually by the second time, we strike up a conversation and start chit-chatting about home towns, favorite wineries in the area, and favorites from the out-of-town visitor home areas.  We’ve gotten lots of tips for places in Hood River/Gorge, Walla Walla, Seattle area, etc… this way.

On the other hand, if you want to study the wines, go at your own pace, and often times get a glimpse of the inside workings of the wine business, avoid the weekends.  In the summer, when days are longer, many tasting rooms stay open until 6, and I occasionally take afternoons off simply due to Spring Fever if there are no crises happening at work.  Fridays are okay, but the tasting rooms are already into weekend happy hour.   Mondays are bad, because many rooms are closed as a matter of recovery and work is gearing up too.  Wednesday and Thursday aren’t bad, but for some odd reason I’ve decided Tuesday is the best day to visit a wine tasting room when careful contemplation is desired.

Tuesdays are very relaxed days in the tasting room itself, and usually there is only one person working there.  That person is often lonely because nobody visits tasting rooms at noon on Tuesday (except me).  This relaxed, lonely atmosphere means the staff person is glad to see you and they are anxious to tell you everything there is to know about the winery and wines.  Sometimes they haven’t practiced this spiel for a whole two days and it’s a little rusty.  The list of wines available is typically the same as any weekend, maybe a few less, but the chances of them being out of a particular sample are pretty slim; they’ve restocked the bar that day.  Many times they need to open a bottle, so you get to see how they decant (or not) and this tells the level of care the server has about the wines.  

And best of all, to me anyway, there is no rush, I can pick and chose what I want, go in the order I want without the server getting upside down, and I can study the wines.  Many times after a server sees I’m serious about tasting, and likely buying, they’ll expand the tasting list to include others, or they’ll stretch the 5 wines for X dollars policy, or provide repeat pours to resample if I want to go back to compare.  Yeah, Tuesdays are the best day to study wines in a tasting room.

Not long ago, I revisited the Olsen Estates tasting room in Prosser Vintner’s Village… on a Tuesday.  I’d been there a year or so ago on a rushed weekend, and frankly been turned off by the crowd.  This particular Tuesday I was the only one there, got to sample several wines I didn’t even know Olsen made, and met one of the owners who was passing through to pick up some samples.  He was on his way to Yakima to meet with a few restaurants to see about getting Olsen wines on their wine lists.  I suggested a few of our favorite eateries in town and asked where they were already listed.  Good info to know.  After carefully tasting through the line-up, I bought a mixed six-pack to get a 10 or 15% discount and came home with three wines. 

One of those was their 2007 Estates Merlot.  I’ve previously explained our former shyness towards Merlot, but this is another example of why that is a thing of the past.    I opened the first bottle earlier this week with dinner and didn’t tell Barb what it was.  The wine has a subtle berry nose with slight earthy notes, actually more what I’d expect from a Syrah.  The mid-palate is silk, medium body with bold cherry and raspberry flavors, followed by more silk.  The finish contains a minty crispness that is hard to explain but that I’ve learned is a signature of Washington Merlot.  It’s not a doublemint or toothpaste mint, but rather an earthy mint like you’ve just picked it from an herb garden, crushed the green leaves between your hands, and taken a good whiff.  I knew Barb was a fan because she was banging her empty glass on the table before I took a second sip and I had to rush to get my share of the bottle.  Only at the end did I tell Barb it was a Merlot.

Go buy a Washington Merlot next Tuesday at your nearest Washington Tasting Room.  Or if you’re out of state, find one on-line or at your local grocery or wine shop.  Unless you’re my mother-in-law, then grab the one you got from the FedEx guy today.  These actions will get you ready for the #WAMerlot twitter tasting event next Thursday.  This event was organized by Josh at Drinknectar.com and his site is the best way to learn how to sign up and participate.  I’m a twitter newb, so I’ll be tweeting in the background.

See you again for another Washington Merlot on Thursday.  After tasting room Tuesday.

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