Of the Vine

Of the Vine
Originally uploaded by mtnester

Oh yes, touring wineries and visiting tasting rooms; that was the original purpose of this late August 'get away'. We visited the tasting room on Main Street in Walla Walla as well as 4 of the 144+ wineries/tasting rooms in the surrounding area. Now 4 may not sound like many but I do know my limits; in terms of drinking and in terms of spending. Nearly every tasting room has a $5. tasting fee per person and you would be hard pressed to find any wine below $30. per bottle. Not that it isn't worth it ! I do believe we heard "It takes a lot of beer to make wine." in every tasting room. After talking with the wine makers and tasting room hosts we really began to see how labor intense it is to produce fine wine. It is quite the science; most specifically chemistry. The weather, the grape type, the sugar content, the barrel composition, the timing of the bottling and so much more go into making or breaking a bottle of good wine. While we did see some vineyards, we did not see as many as we expected. One of the vintners explained that they purchased grapes from other areas to use in their wine making along with some local grapes because it would be risky to count on the weather for just one area to produce the quality of grapes needed.