OTB # 5 – Free Weekend Included – Fox Estates 2000 Merlot – Columbia Valley

Fox Estate Vineyards and Winery will be on the right side of the bus driving through Mattawa on the Wahluke Slope. So is the For Sale sign. Yes, the property and business are for sale and if you have the dough, would certainly be a wonderful investment. Why heck, if you’re Rupert Murdock, you wouldn’t even have to change the name and since Sarah Palin is already on your payroll and is a goddess in Eastern Washington, she’d make the perfect spokesperson.

But if you’re a few mill short like me, how about joining together with your new bus mates in a time share arrangement?!?!? What are there, a dozen or so of you on the bus? How many does it take to run a vineyard and winery? Not even that many, so I’ve conjured up a plan whereby you can all own your own little piece of Washington Wine Country. Fox Estates Shares of Time for Early Retirement, PLC, LLC, SPC, ETC, INC., aka FESTER, is offering 2 to 6 week blocks of time for everyone to become an instant vineyard owner/winemaker/celebrity/bazillionaire.

Best of all, with your timeshare of FESTER you can pick and choose the weeks that make the most sense for you and your lifestyle. If you love freezing your tail off, ice wine grape harvesting and barrel racking are available from December through February and duck hunting on the Columbia is just minutes away, just bring your own shotgun. If you like heat exhaustion, daily sauna bathes are available in the vineyards from late June though August. Heat units are best when paired with whites and roses, and you can plant your very own here with plenty of irrigation water rights included. If you like working 36 hours days while others watch football, harvest time and fermentation punch downs from late September through November will fit the bill. Cheap power from the nearby dams and wind turbines will keep the wind machines churning and floodlights burning for the occasional early frost and around-the-clock FESTER harvest.

But if none of that is fun enough for you, don’t be the last to sign up, because spring is the absolute best time to own time at FESTER!!! You can let someone else prune the vines and worry about frost while you relax; Bud Break means the same as Spring Break at FESTER with free Budweiser and wet T-shirt contests happening daily at the soon to be installed swimming pool and paddleball court (artist rendering of what this will look like after construction above). Yep, the Months of March, April, and May will only cost you 1/4th of the asking price, but you’ll get at least a full quarter of the FESTER fun.

As a sample of what this fine land and facility can produce, we recently sampled a bottle of Fox Estates 2000 Merlot. These wines are still available at some stores, I got this at a grocery in Quincy, and I’m guessing other vintages are in warehouses somewhere. As a FESTER investor you will be able to sample other varieties and vintages from the estate library at your leisure. Remarkably this 2000 wine was full of big fruit up front, cherry and raspberry, the mid-palate was a little thin and fading off at the end, but it was still a nice wine. If I were scoring this wine for future potential of FESTER wines, I’d give it a solid 90+. (In the real world, it is absolutely a suitable Merlot for everyday drinking.)

Don’t worry about saying YES to this investment opportunity, I’m sure your significant other you left at home in Texas, California, Michigan, or Pennsylvania will support your decision to spend the kids’ college tuition on FESTER weeks. So sign on the dotted line NOW!!! You will be allowed to use the restroom and get back on the bus when the ink is fully dried and the earnest money check has cleared the bank.

Footnote: All of this FESTER nonsense is fantasy and whimsy on my part (as far as I know time share ownership is not available), but the real info on the Fox Estates Vineyard and Winery can be found at the real estate link included.

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OTB Fun Fact: Some politicians and citizens of Eastern Washington have attempted to divest themselves of the wetter side of the state numerous times throughout history. One such plan involved creating a “State of Lincoln” and might include parts of Eastern Oregon and the Idaho Panhandle. Other proposed names for the State include East Washington and Columbia. This would be one sure fired way to resolve the sticky issue of which state the Columbia Valley and Walla Walla AVA’s belong to.