Wine Tasting! Making My Way Through Washington State One Wine Taste at a Time.

This past weekend I finally had a chance to go wine tasting.  Yea, I've been here in the Northwest over sixteen years and still have not gone wine tasting. Bad me!  Anyway, a friend had her 40th birthday and decided to hire one of those tour buses to take about 20 of us on a wine tour!   We toured three wineries in Washington State (Ridgefield and Battleground to be exact.)   It was so much fun!   On top of visiting wineries I had never heard of, the drive through the countryside of Washington was beautiful.

Gouger Cellars was the first stop.  I'll be honest, I didn't care for too many of their white wines but their reds were amazing!   He even had a red wine with chocolate in it.  I didn't care for that though.  The classics....Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Pinot Noir, Zinfandel....all were very smooth.  Oh wait!  I take that back..he had a Voignier that was lovely so there was one white I liked.  :)

The owner himself served the wine.   He was full of great information on how the wines were made and combined.    He even had his own ice cream made with wine.   Dangerous territory for me, right there.   Picture it....me having a glass of wine with a bowl of wine ice cream add a few more servings and then me, collapsed in bed.  Yea, that's exactly what would happen.

Now the next vinyard was Three Brothers.    For this one I chose to taste all white.   There were only two white wines I liked and I was pleasantly surprised with them.   A Riesling and a Dry Riesling were the two I tasted.   I'm not much of a Riesling fan but these were amazing.  I see I'm going to have to reconsider my opinion.  Also goes to show that it's not so much the kind of wine but the vinyard that makes them.

My dream is to have one of these. :)

Such sweet grapes.

I'll take every last barrel!

Now the last vinyard was also very nice but I stopped the wine tasting at this point BUT....I hear they have great Pinot Grigio (which is my favorite of all.)  Being a migraine sufferer (and combined with the heat of the day) I had to really be careful so I drank water the rest of the way.   If it were a cooler day I wouldn't have stopped.  I just know what sets off my migraines.  :)

All in all, I really, really enjoyed it!   I want to try the Oregon wines (Willamette Valley).   I'm thinking fall would be a great time of year to go wine tasting.

I'm headed home to California for a visit with the family this week but if I have time I will post a delicious eggroll recipe I just made recently!   

Until then...enjoy every minute of your life!  xoxo