Waterbrook Winery offers a little fly fishing with your wine

The centuries old adage, “A flask of wine, a book of verse and thou …,” had to be rewritten to something more like a taste of wine, a wooly bugger and us and the kids, as Waterbrook Winery hosted its second annual Fly Fishing Fair on Saturday.

Last year the event brought in about 100 people, and by noon on Saturday it looked like there would be more than 100 adults and children this year.

“It’s a winery, it’s not about kids,” Waterbrook tasting room manager Ron Williams said, making it clear that the winery’s primary goal is to cater to adults.

But sometimes adults have kids in tow. And when that is the case, it helps if the winery has a nice pond with a walking path, a bocce court, a large patio with fireplace and a wide-screen TV where they will gladly put on Sponge Bob. It’s what Williams likes to describe as a “family friendly” winery.

“The goal is to keep the children entertained while the adults taste wine,” he added.

Not only were kids entertained, but they got to learn about fly fishing, as members of the Walla² Fly Fishers club answered … Continue Reading

Wines of Substance is hot, affordable

The aptly named Wines of Substance received a fine accolade this winter when Wine Business Monthly named it one of the year’s top 10 “Hot Small Brands.” Substance is a Walla Walla wine project, laudable on many levels, conceived by Jason Huntley and Jamie Brown (Waters Winery), and Greg Harrington (Gramercy Cellars).

The packaging is simple, clever, eye-catching and superbly executed. Substance wines take their graphic look from the periodic table of elements, transmuting individual grape varietals into chemical symbols, just as the wine in the bottle stands for the signature of each particular grape.

The lineup strays far afield from the usual suspects. You will find … Continue Reading

Owners of Leonetti Cellar launch a ‘whole table’ approach

Viticulturist and winemaker Chris Figgins stands at the edge of a panoramic overlook taking in the neatly planted rows of his newest vineyard like a painter scrutinizing his masterpiece.

“I see a piece of ground as an artist sees a blank canvas,” he explains. “To me that land is telling me how it’s going to get planted.”

For six years Figgins, the CEO and director of winemaking for his family’s Leonetti Cellar, has painstakingly worked this northeastern Walla Walla County land in preparation for a new food and winemaking venture that showcases his passion for sustainability and quality.

The launch of his single-vineyard estate wine, FIGGINS, and a grass-fed cattle operation, Lostine Cattle Co., mark an expansion for the owners of Leonetti, one of Washington’s oldest wineries established in … Continue Reading

Cupcakes and beer make splash at Feast Walla Walla

Cupcakes and beer made their debut among the fine foods and wines at this year’s Feast Walla Walla.

But unknown to many local oenophiles, beer has already debuted in many local wineries, sometimes through the back door, said brew master Court Ruppenthal.

As the owner of Laht Neppur Brewing Co. in Waitsburg, Ruppenthal said he does a number of regular deliveries to Walla Walla wineries, which usually buy his 21/2-gallon “pigs” for their own personal consumption.

“It’s kind of a route. When someone is getting one (a pig), I will call and see if other guys need one,” and usually they do, he added.

Apparently Feast Walla Walla needed a couple pigs as well, and Ruppenthal noted coordinators approached him about selling his beer at this year’s event. But instead of pigs, he brought … Continue Reading

Vision for ‘The Village’ in Walla Walla includes tasting rooms

The most ambitious idea for a tasting room yet brews inside the dust-riddled warehouse of a building at 207 E. Main St.

Inside the 23,000-square-foot space, once home to the Blue Mountain Humane Society Thrift Store, businessman Craig Keister envisions rows of satellite wine-tasting rooms interspersed roughly every third space with non-wine entities — a chocolatier, a cheese maker, a coffee roaster, a brewer, a deli, you name it.

He sees a first-class restaurant on the second floor — after, of course, refinishing the floors, sandblasting the brick, replacing the glass blocks with windows looking over Main Street and building a kitchen.

On the main floor, integrated with the tasting rooms and other businesses, he sees a haven for art-lovers. He wants to move the staircase from the middle of the entryway to the eastern side of the building. He wants to create a lobby, anchored by a sculpture, maybe with a … Continue Reading

Win tickets to Feast Walla Walla

Feast Walla Walla is taking place in downtown Walla Walla next week on Saturday, April 10. It is organized by the Downtown Walla Walla Foundation and features some of the best wine and food in our lovely valley. You can also expect art and music as you roam around the tent with your complimentary wine glass and and small tray full of  food samples. And when we say food, we also mean delicious desserts. And when we say wine, we also mean delicious beer.

They are expecting 34 wineries and over 15 restaurants this year. The cost is $45 per person which gets you 10 tokens that can be used to sample Walla Walla Valley wine or sample food prepared by some of the best chefs in town. Wine and Dine Walla Walla will be covering the event so stop by our table to say hello.

We’ll be walking around the tent with a camera and interviewing local winemakers, chefs and random people enjoying the festivities. If you can’t attend, we’ll be shooting short video profiles with all the participating wineries and restaurants. We’ll try to post those throughout the day. We will also be setting up an … Continue Reading

Find your appetite at Feast Walla Walla

Call it the carnival of consumption. Soiree of sustenance. The gala of goodies.

Any way you slice it, the third annual Feast Walla Walla will offer more bite this year.

The April 10 event will host its largest number of vendors yet with 50 eateries and wineries already on board, said Jennifer Northam, events and public relations manager for the Downtown Walla Walla Foundation.

“We’re going to be so packed in that tent,” Northam said. “I can hardly wait.”

She said the number of restaurants and eateries has increased this year as … Continue Reading

#WAMerlot at Walla Walla’s Otis Kenyon tasting room

Art and wine toast Army unit

After nearly 900 combat hours over Mosul skies, the little things on the ground became the elements of Ana Martinez-Townsend’s most enduring daydreams.

On the most relaxing of evenings — if such a thing exists in the intense surroundings of a war zone — the Walla Walla native, deployed to Iraq a year ago, transported herself to the idyllic setting of her front porch of her southern home.

“Every time I had an evening off and I sat outside my (combat housing unit), I would imagine being home with my family — sitting on the porch, sipping on wine and just enjoying the evening,” she said via e-mail.

But it wasn’t long before the vision of a glass of wine evolved into a much greater plan that would give Ana and the rest of her unit not only a taste of Walla Walla’s signature juice, but a keepsake souvenir for the B Troop 1-230th Aviation Cavalry Squadron.

Armed with her computer, Ana, an officer and helicopter pilot, kept in touch with her family and friends through Facebook during her yearlong stint in Iraq. Her interaction included online exchanges with childhood friend and fellow Walla Walla High School class of 1993 graduate Chris Kontos, co-owner of Kontos Cellars.

Through this interaction, the idea came: “She wondered if there was any way to make a personalized label or anything (her unit) could have with some dates on it,” Kontos explained. … Continue Reading

Sapolil Cellars serves blues, drinks

WALLA WALLA — For the last three of seven years, local music and local wine have poured through Sapolil Cellars‘ downtown tasting room.

But on Friday, the Sapolil label gave up its proprietary spot on the tasting room’s beverage list as top billing went to an out-of-town band, “Billy Roy Danger & The Rectifiers.”

It was all part of a plan, winemaker and co-owner Abigail Schwerin explained, to transform the Main Street tasting room into an intimate and well-known blues concert venue, one that will attract the biggest performers from the Pacific Northwest.

“To be able to see the beads of sweat on their faces while they are performing is amazing,” Schwerin said, the day after the concert.

About once a month, Sapolil Cellars will bring in some of the biggest regional names in blues music to build a venue and to introduce more people to Sapolil wines.

Already, the few major performers who have played in the tasting room have responded positively to the crowds and the acoustics, Schwerin said. She noted how award-winning blues and jazz trombonist Randy Oxford recorded a CD in the tasting room in 2008 after coming in one Sunday for a sound test and deciding the acoustics were perfect for his next live recording. … Continue Reading

Show Your Support – We Love Washington Merlot!

Here in Washington State, and especially in Walla Walla, we really didn’t care what the sullen Merlot-bashing character, Miles Raymond from the movie Sideways, felt about one of our favorite wines.   We were secure enough about our position in the wine world, that it was obvious that Miles Raymond had never tasted a Merlot from Washington State.  So, the joke was on him!

Grab a couple of bottles or more of your favorite Washington Merlot and join us Thursday, March 25 from 5 – 8 pm PDT to show your support on Twitter!  Help us send a unified message around the Twitter Nation.  You can  Tweet from home, a local winery, a wine bar, or a restaurant.  Make it a party and gather all of your friends!  Through the night, you’ll be able to see what everyone is saying about Washington Merlot and you may be able to connect with other wine lovers enjoying the same bottle of Merlot!

Video after the break.

… Continue Reading