Wine fun in Washington!

Since moving to Washington State I've learned that I live in the second largest wine making state in the country!  Those stats don't lie, there are wineries EVERYWHERE! It's amazing.  Even though I moved here before RoB, I checked out a few wineries on my own (which can be awkward, depending on the place, for example, Hamilton was great about it).  But I did get to try a LOT of local wineries during the spring barrel weekend. Some of my coworkers decided to get a limo for the occasion (for one day) and for other two days of the weekend a couple of us hard-core tasters checked out some others.

Spring Barrel is a special weekend in the spring when wineries let you try some of the samples straight form the barrels (as well as regular tasting, obviously).  Many of the wineries are on a passport that we bought.  These magical passes meant we didn't have to pay tasting fees for any wineries in the passport (not that it's a big deal since most wineries will refund a tasting fee if you buy a bottle) and if you get stamps from at least six wineries you get a commemorative glass!

For the best recap I will link to all of my yelp reviews for the wineries we went to!  We started at Airfield (even though it was bigger, still fun!), then went to Thurston Wolfe (great), and Gamache (meh).  These three were all walking distance from each other and there were a lot more within walking, but they weren't on our passports so we saved them for another time.  Next we headed north to Barrel Springs (a bit off the beaten path but beautiful and very friendly) and we ate lunch there because it was so nice!  Last stop in Prosser was Kestral (a bit snooty for my taste).  The limo made a final stop in Benton City at Chandler Reach before taking us back the starting point which was conveniently enough in the parking lot for our final winery of the day, Thomas O'Neil.

That was only day one of the weekend, the next day we went to Kitzke (a bit uppity), Goose Ridge (great wine, big estate), and Kiona (love!).  Then, on day three we went to JBell Cellars, Two Mountain, Wineglass Cellars, and had dinner out in Yakima.  We could decide which place to go since there were a couple listed in our wine passport so we just had appetizers at two places, 5 North and Second Street Grill.

I'm glad I got to taste so much over the weekend, but in general these special weekends aren't the best to go tasting.  For most people they are just out to drink, not out to try some good wine and learn about it. In general I wouldn't say the weekend passport is worth buying since almost all wineries refund your tasting fee with a purchase and I tend to purchase wine almost everywhere I taste.  I also prefer to go when the wineries can pay more attention to each individual person.  I have already checked out many other wineries and hope to share some of my favorites soon!

Kentucky Wine!

One of the things I've noticed about Kentucky is the lack of users on yelp.  Yes, businesses have a page but there are usually only a handful of reviews, so I'm trying to help that by throwing in some of my own.  I thought a good place to start would be to review all the wineries we have visited since moving to Kentucky!

The first Kentucky winery we went to was Chrisman Mill's tasting room in Hamburg, see my yelp review here.  The wine was not so good, the server didn't really answer our questions but he was nice, and the tasting room was very cute, that about sums it up!  After tasting wine there we were very nervous about Kentucky wine in general and worried that we might not be able to find any that we liked.

Our next free weekend we drove out towards Frankfort to try some wineries out there and had a nice meal at Holly Hill Inn (review here).  Our first winery was Prodigy (review here) which was a good stop, not really what we expected but still glad we stopped by.  Our second stop was Equus Run which we loved, and highly recommend!

Our next wine trip occurred during RoB's birthday bash, and you can read his details about it here.  We started at Grimes Mill which was a very friendly place with good wine, and also was interested in hiring RoB (talk about a great birthday present!) he now works there and blogs for them.  From there we went to Talon, which we had a groupon for, it was a  good deal but the wine was VERY hit or miss.  Last stop that day was at Jean Ferris, where we also ended up eating dinner.  My yelp review is just pertaining to the wine tasting, which was weird.  I wish they had a separate tasting room and not just the bar in the restaurant.  Their wine is great, but the wine tasting experience there wasn't great.

One day about a month or two later we were heading to pick up Angel from doggie day care and saw that Acres of Land winery was right around the corner, so we took a detour.  The wine was just ok, but the tasting experience was a bit awkward, I really hate it when you have to pay before you taste, and that's what they did here.

That sums up my most recent yelp dump, at some point I also plan to add Blackbarn and Harkness Edwards since we went to both of those during the McConnell Springs Barrel tasting.