Wine tasting in Spokane, WA was the planned event |
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| for Thursday, Sept. 6th. It was a beautiful
day, sunny, warm without being too hot. We had to worry if we
purchased wine and the car got to hot for the wine to be sitting in
it for any length of time. Jim's daughter was hoping to do
this trip with us, but, alas, it wasn't to be. I did a Google search to find out what was available and started to make my plans. I made reservations at a couple of tasting rooms that were not normally open on a Thursday, and the rest were already open to the public for the day. As part of the links that came up during my search, there was a magazine called Washington CEO that had presented some awards to various Washington Wineries, and several were from Spokane, so I also used that as an influence to figure out where to taste. If you are interested in the Spokane area, here are a couple of websites that you can check out to make your own plans: from Wines Northwest (a great site for anything Wine in the NW) http://www.winesnw.com/spokane_area_map.html
from "Visit Spokane" website http://www.visitspokane.com/EventPromo/canadian/wineries.html This is the list, in the order we tasted. They all had some great wines, we did end up with just under a case when it was all said and done. The food at Wild Sage was excellent too, it was recommended to us by Rebecca Gunselman at Robert Karl.
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| Our first stop was Whitestone Winery in Wilbur, WA.
It is a 75 mile drive west of Spokane, so it was going to take us a
couple of hours to get there from Hayden, ID. Our appointment
was for 10:00am, we left at 8:00am, stopped to fill the gas tank and
at Starbucks to get some coffee to fill "our" gas tanks for the
drive :) We arrived exactly at 10:00am, I wasn't sure how, but we
did it. We got to taste 3 wines and we enjoyed all three, but
we only purchased our two most "favoritest" of them. We stayed
a little longer than expected, we truly enjoyed our visit at
Whitestone and will be watching for their wine.
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| The tasting room for Whitestone, it looks like an old gas station, but forgot to ask if that is exactly what it was. The wine is actually made in a couple of buildings behind here. | Michael Haig, part owner (family owned) and also the winemaker and farmer in the vineyard is helping Jim to purchase the wine we decided on. |
| We drove back along Hwy 2 (the same way we got out)
to Spokane to our next stop. We were running a little late, so
I called to let Robert Karl know we were on our way. Rebecca
was ok with that, which was wonderful, because I really wanted to
taste at Robert Karl. It is another family owned and run
winery. Joe works full time at one of the local hospitals as
an anesthesiologist and makes the wine in his spare time (is there
such a thing?). Rebecca, his wife, does a lot of work too,
along with managing the tasting room. She even drives the
refrigerated truck to bring in the grapes. Loved the wines,
loved visiting with Rebecca (she is a wealth of knowledge and
information), and will keep our eyes open for more Robert Karl
wines.
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| Rebecca and Jim checking out the renovations to the building. Currently they make their wine here, but will building a new facility at some point and this will just be the tasting room | Rebecca and myself in the barrel room, always one of my favorite spots in a winery! |
| We had a nice leisurely lunch at Wild Sage Bistro, the Panini sandwiches we had were very yummy. It was a great choice because Jim loves Panini sandwiches! | |
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| the bar area of the bistro. I finally noticed the lighting and saw that it was the same line as what I have in our house in Texas! Someone else has great taste :) | There is a lot of renovation going on in Spokane, this was taken from the parking lot next to the bistro. A new mall has been built in the old steam plant next door. |
| Literally right around the corner, the Grande Ronde Cellars tasting room is through the doors in the Freeman Building and then down the stairs. It is a eclectic room of art and other objects for sale along with being able to taste wines from Grande Ronde (still wine), Mountain Dome (sparkling wine), from the same owners and then a couple of other labels that they also taste there. | |
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| the entrance to Grande Ronde Cellars, parking is not free though, this just happens to be a "Diamond" lot. | in the door and down the stairs, a tasting we will go... |
| The next stop was at Lone Canary, in a small light
industrial area. It is amazing how many wineries use these
type of facilities, they are very cost effective. Jen was
helping us in the tasting room, which is a small area from where
they actually make the wine. So far, up to this point, we have
not paid for any tastings, though Grande Ronde would have charged us
if we had not bought a bottle of wine (I also bought a really cool
purse). Back to Lone Canary :) they had a few wines to
taste and they were all pretty dang good, we did buy two bottles,
the two high-end ones: DuBrul Vineyard select and the Proprietors
Reserve. Both excellent wines with lots of character and
balance.
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| The entrance to the tasting room & winery... | Inside the tasting room, Jen is ringing up our sales of the two bottles that we bought. They do charge 5$ for the reserve tasting, but it was worth the taste... and we got it back since we bought some wine. |
| Down the road a little further, we were looking for
an old schoolhouse where Knipprath Cellars could be found. We
found some shade to park in; to protect the wine in the car and
headed in to go tasting. Once inside, it kind of reminded us
of L'Ecole 41 in Walla Walla that is also housed in an old
schoolhouse. We climbed up a couple of flights of stairs and
found ourselves in a smallish tasting room, but so far, it was the
only one with other customers. We tried the red wines and THEN
I tried the dessert wines... oh my gosh! they have become known for
their dessert wines! Chocolate port, Vanilla port, Truffle
port, and many others. I had to buy a 350ml bottle of each of
those I listed...
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| The front of the schoolhouse where Knipprath Cellars is housed. | Up the stairs and into the tasting room. The gentleman bent over looking at the wine is buying 4 bottles of the flavored ports, 2 chocolate and 2 vanilla... good choices! |
| Our last stop is at Arbor Crest Cellars, they
actually have two tasting rooms in Spokane; I chose the one up on
the hill, not the one downtown. It was a little bit of a
drive, but worth it. The view was beautiful, and they put the
view to work. They host lots of music on Sundays, customers
bring a picnic lunch or purchase at the winery, buy some wine and
enjoy. We tasted the reds available, again, they had some nice
wines. I really liked the Sangiovese, I think that is what we
bought. Remember we have had a few tastes by now at six
different wineries so I may not be exactly right :)
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| The tasting room with outside seating, the venue for the music is down the path... | some grape vines and looking out over Spokane Valley from the winery. |
| It was a great time tasting, we enjoyed each of the wineries and hope to visit some of the others on another trip. Everyone was very friendly and I would recommend visiting all of those we did and find some new favorites for yourself! | |
