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 event page on our site where you’ll be able to follow the festivities via Twitter (if you’ll be Tweeting, make sure you use #feastwallawalla) and see photos and videos posted live from Feast Walla Walla.

Ticket giveaway

We’ll be giving away 2 tickets. All you need to do to qualify is create your Wine and Dine profile. You’ll see a few links under “Join the Wine and Dine community” on the right. You can join with your Facebook profile by clicking on the Facebook Connect link or click “Register.” You can also create a profile using your Google, Yahoo, and WindowsLive accounts. Or you can create one from scratch.

We’ll randomly pick two winners from all the profiles. To be eligible, we are asking that you complete your profile a much as possible and that at the very least you have an avatar or picture for your profile. Simple enough. We’ll be picking the winners on Monday, April 5 at 12 p.m.

We’ll be offering other prizes and discounts to our community members throughout the year. And of course, it is absolutely free.

*Employees of the Walla Walla Union-Bulletin, Wine and Dine Walla Walla and the Downtown Walla Walla Foundation are not eligible.

Video after the break.

Walla Walla’s showcase event for food and wine will bring some new flavors to the table this year. Fish tacos, draft beer and hard cider among them.

Organizers of foodie festival Feast Walla Walla are getting tongues wagging for the third annual event, signing the largest number of food participants yet.

Fourteen food purveyors — from longtime chefs to culinary arts students — will serve everything from pub grub to fancy fare at the April 10 event, according to an announcement from the Downtown Walla Walla Foundation.

The $45 tickets are on sale now for participants 21 and older. The three-hour event starts at 1 p.m. that Saturday. Here’s how it works: Guests at the entrance of a 400-foot heated tent on First Avenue between Main and Alder streets trade their tickets for 10 event tokens and a commemorative wine glass. The tokens are exchanged at stations set up throughout the tent for samples of food and wine.

With restaurants and wineries — not to mention a brewery and cidery this year — under one roof, the event is a chance to dine from multiple menus and pair the food with Walla Walla’s renowned wines. Works from four local artists will also be on display throughout the tent and live music will be performed by local musicians, said Jennifer Northam, marketing and events manager for the Downtown Walla Walla Foundation.

Among the newcomers to this year’s Feast are Isaacs Avenue bar The Green Lantern, known for its fish tacos; Main Street bakery Walla Walla Bread Co., the recently opened Olive Marketplace & Café, Waitsburg’s Laht Neppur Brewery and Milton-Freewater’s Blue Mountain Cider Co.

Northam said the event, a cooperative endeavor that also includes Tourism Walla Walla and the restaurant and wine industries, is a fundraiser for the downtown foundation.

The costs of the tent rental, tables, linens and more are generally covered by the event’s sponsor, Banner Bank. Ticket sales help offset permitting and insurance costs. But the main fundraiser comes from retail wine sales that result during the event.

Guests can purchase bottles of wine poured by the local wineries. A portion of those sales goes to the downtown foundation, Northam said.

She said this year’s event already promises more food purveyors than the past two years.

Feast Walla Walla opened two years ago with 12 eateries.

One of those was a coffee shop. Last year 11 food purveyors signed on. One of those occupied two spaces. As in years past, participants are coming from as far as the Pendleton area with representation from Plateau, Wildhorse Resort & Casino’s fine-dining establishment.
feast walla walla

To buy tickets, go to FeastWallaWalla.com .

A partial list of participants:

Dining

• Aloha Sushi
• Bright’s Candies
• Cheese Louise
• CreekTown Café
• CrossRoads Steakhouse
• Fat Duck Inn
• The Green Lantern
• Olive Market
• Plateau
• Salumiere Cesario
• T. Maccarone’s
• The Marc Restaurant
• Walla Walla Bread Co.
• Walla Walla Community College Culinary Arts Program

Drinking

• Ash Hollow
• Balboa Winery
• Basel Cellars
• Blue Mountain Cider Co.
• Cadaretta Winery
• DaMa Wines
• Dunham Cellars
• Dusted Valley Vintnes
• El Corazon Winery
• Flying Trout Winery
• Laht Neppur Brewing Co.
• Locati Cellars
• Mannina Cellars
• Morrison Lane Vineyards
• Nicholas Cole Cellars
• Northstar Winery
• Otis Kenyon Winery
• Patrick M. Paul Vineyards
• Stephenson Cellars
• Sweet Valley wines
• Three Rivers Winery
• Trio Vintners
• Va Piano Vineyards
• Walla Faces
• Walla Walla Village Winery

We stopped by for a quick visit with Ronn Coldiron, owner and winemaker at Glencorrie Winery. He gave us a little background on the winery and shared some future plans. In case you are wondering Glencorrie is made of two Gaelic words that mean “field” and “pot-hole.” Ronn explained that pot-holes are part of the Columbia Valley geography. He also gave us some details about an upcoming baguette-making class that will be hosted by the winery in the month of March. Ronn has apparently perfected a recipe that will allow anyone to bake a Parisian-style baguette in a conventional oven. We may be back to check out the class. If you want more information about Glencorrie or want details about the baguette-making class, check out their site, glencorrie.com or give them a call at 509.525.2585.

Video after the break.

Watch video after the break.

Jennifer Northam talks with Tom Maccarone about Olive Marketplace. Get a sneak peak at the new digs before it’s open. Only on the Downtown Buzz, sponsored by the Walla Walla Downtown Foundation.

Video after the break

Living in wine country – there are magazines published, books written and even entire furniture lines targeted to the “lifestyle” – but what does it really mean?

We are fortunate enough to live within a couple of miles from some of Washington’s most prestigious wineries and tasting rooms so I decided that I want to get a first hand look at what the average visitor to Walla Walla experiences when they enter a tasting room here in the valley. And I want find out how they decide where to go during each visit to our “wine country.”

My first stop on this quest is Dunham Cellars. Dunham is known for their busy tasting room, their great wine club parties, a knock-out line-up of single vineyard reserve wines and of course the dogs!

I went tasting on a Thursday afternoon last week; not their busiest day of the week but what Jordan Fitzgerald, my guide during my time at Dunham, tells me is a steady day. She can expect to see about 15-20 visitors on an average weekday, but during harvest season weekends the small tasting room bursts at the seams seeing over 100 people on a given Saturday. Dunham Cellars does charge a $5 tasting fee but the day I was there they were pouring 10 wines and they offered the tasting fee back towards my purchase.

During my tasting experience, a couple small groups came through. Both happened to be ladies’ groups that were in town from the Seattle area having a “girls weekend.” They had assigned a fearless leader to chart the entire tasting weekend. And she was armed with maps, visitor guides and a legal pad full of notes. Every place they went, she said, everyone told them to make sure Dunham was on their list.

One of the misconceptions about Walla Walla wines is that we only do reds but I found that not to be the case, at least not at my first stop. Dunham Cellars provided quite the range for my tasting from a dry lightly oaked chardonnay to a full bodied, jammy single vineyard Lewis syrah. I even got a little dessert in a glass with a 2008 late harvest Riesling.

The Dunham’s have capitalized on their own family talent. Their winemaker, Eric Dunham, not only provides the artwork to decorate the World War II hanger attached to the tasting room but also designs the artwork on their single vineyard selections as well. If bringing in 18 tons of fruit on a given day in October isn’t enough Eric doubles or triples as it were as the chef at harvest lunches and occasionally for a winemaker dinner hosted at the winery.

Dunham Cellars tasting room is open daily from 11-4. They have been hosting harvest lunches earlier in the fall and will continue their Winemaker Dinner series throughout the winter. Check out their website for more information on Winemaker Dinners and area events that Dunham participates in: www.dunhamcellars.com

Dunham Cellars 2004 Syrah is featured in the Wall Street Journal video with Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher of the WSJ “Tasting” column.

We met with the women behind DaMa Wines as they prepared their grapes for the crush.

The Taming of the Shrew is currently being performed at the Walla Walla Ampitheater. See story for more details.