skip to Main Content

Last Day in Walla Walla

Our final day in Walla Walla started at Charles Smith Wines.  I really wanted to hit the tasting room at K Vintners (owner and winemaker is Charles Smith), but they are closed most days.  Charles Smith was a fine replacement.  The tasting room was awesome.  It was very different from most, but I loved it.  It has a very industrial feeling with exposed pipes, big wooden rafters, and fabulous brick walls.  It’s huge and can easily be used for some potentially fun-filled events.  The wines were fun too.  He makes some very affordable wines such as “Kung Fu Girl“ Riesling, “Eve” Chardonnay,  “The Velvet Devil” Merlot and more.  They were all pretty good for the price.  Personally, I dig his Syrah.  They’re HUGE, but I really like them.

We had a 1pm appointment at Long Shadows, so that was our next destination.  We arrived about ½ an hour early, but Jeff was great and let us come right in.  Boy oh boy, this place is special.  The building is beautiful, the views are stunning and the wines are spectacular.  It’s really difficult to find anything wrong with this tasting.  Jeff was perhaps the most knowledgeable person of the trip, and again, the wines …

Long Shadows is very different from other wineries.  They have a different winemaker (all well respected and well known in the wine world) for each varietal, and each wine is named differently.  I could go on and on about Long Shadows and each wine and their winemaker, so I plan to feature one of their wines in an upcoming Wine of the Month.  I loved all of the wines, but only had room for two in my checked case boxes.  Luckily they distribute!

Our next stop was Va Piano.  They had some nice wines and the gal was very nice.  The tasting room was packed with a bunch of men on a tour.  They seemed to be having a good time!  We bought a Bruno’s Blend V, which is a nice, easy drinking wine for only $23.

Next up was Waters, another pretty spot.  They also have a very nice tasting room and some good wines.  We picked up a 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon.

Our last winery of the trip was Sleight of Hand.  My stepson is a magician, so a stop here was a must!  Little did we know we were walking into a REALLY fun experience.  As soon as we walked into the tasting room the co-owner and winemaker, Trey, greeted us with a question:  “What do you want to hear?”   I was a little confused; until I saw the row of albums he had lining the back wall.  I suggested Bryan Ferry, and by gosh if he didn’t have some Roxy Music!  So he put on the album, (yes, VINYL!!!) and we started tasting.

They have some really nice wines.  My husband fell in love with them.  We ended up buying four, even though we didn’t have the room.  We decided that we would need to drink two bottles before leaving Washington!  Shipping isn’t an option when it’s already in the 90’s at home.  So we purchased a 2009 “Enchantress” Chardonnay, a 2008 “Levitation” Syrah and two bottles of the 2008 “The Illusionist” Cabernet Sauvignon.  The chardonnay was full of green apple with some nice oak, but not too much.  The acidity was good, so it was nicely balanced.  The Cab has some nice dark fruit on the nose and palate, and is one we’re going to cellar for a little while.   We also picked up some swag for our 17 year old magician!

After all of the wine tasting, a beer sounded pretty good.  So we took the advice of Brooke from Reininger and headed to a local hangout called The Green Lantern.  My husband had been dying to sit at a fire pit all during the trip, and Brooke had told us this was the place.  Unfortunately, we were there too early!  Oh well.  We had a couple of very tasty beers and some filling nachos and called it a day.

The next day we headed to Spokane, from where we were flying out.  We stayed at the Northern Quest Resort and Casino.  We had a fabulous dinner at Masselow’s (the Port Mushrooms with Parmesan are a MUST ORDER).  They let us bring in a bottle of wine for a moderate corkage fee, which helped us with our overage!  We then hit the craps tables for a couple of hours and headed to bed for our journey home the next day.

By the way, the state of Washington has unbelievably awesome bathrooms.  The bathrooms in every one of our rooms except for the Courtyard by Marriott (which was pretty basic) were so great.  The bathroom at Northern Quest was the coolest I’ve ever seen.  We took pictures and hope to update our bathroom at home to look like a Spokane Washington bathroom!!!

Next Stop:  Italy in July!

Walla Walla Day 1

Heading into Walla Walla was really exciting, because it was the section of the trip to which I was most looking forward.  The beautiful Blue Mountains framed the drive in.  Greeting us was a large billboard from K Vintners and its controversial owner and winemaker Charles Smith.

Before entering Walla Walla proper, there is a small town called Lowden.  We stopped here first at L’Ecole No. 41.  The winery is housed in an adorable French schoolhouse, with the tasting room in a former classroom.  The wines being tasted each day are cleverly displayed on an old-fashioned chalkboard.  Brandon walked us through a selection of some nice wines.  I especially enjoyed their Left Bank Bordeaux blends, the 2007 Estate Perigee – Seven Hills Vineyard Walla Walla (60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc) and the 2007 Apogee – Pepper Bridge Vineyard Walla Walla (60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 6% Malbec, 4% Cabernet Franc).

These wines are adorned with their new label, a switch from their very recognizable “whimsical” drawing of the schoolhouse.   They’ve found a need to make their fine wines look like fine wines on the outside, so they’ve classed up the label with a photo of the schoolhouse taken in 1915, shortly after it was built.

Brandon also told us to be sure to stop next door at Woodward Canyon Winery, and I’m glad that he did.  Taylor poured us a very nice 2009 Chardonnay, along with a great Walla Walla 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon.   The Chard was golden apples and peach in a glass, with just a kiss of oak.  I had to get a bottle.  I also bought the Cab, which was a Left Bank Bordeaux blend, but with a splash of Syrah added to the mix.  It was 77% Cab, with 10 % Cab Franc, 7 % Syrah, and 3 % each of Merlot and Petit Verdot.   It had a nice spiciness on the palate, along with some mocha and dark berries.  The finish was nice and long.

Not only does Woodward Canyon have some very good wines, but a cute tasting room with nice people too!

Heading further toward Walla Walla we stopped at Reininger Winery, where Brooke helped us out.  She was awesome!  We tried some nice wines, including an ‘07 Syrah from their second label called Helix, which was really yummy for the price point of $28.  We also tried a fun Southern Rhone blend they call the Helix SoRho priced at $31.  My favorite of theirs is the 2006 Reininger Ash Hollow Syrah, with vanilla on the nose and chocolate covered cherries and some coffee on the palate.  The finish on this went on for a nice long time.  Brooke was born and raised in Walla Walla, and filled us in on a lot of the town’s history.  She told us some fascinating tid bits, for example that years ago the residents of the city voted in favor of getting the Washington State Penitentiary to boost the economy and help create jobs.  Today it is the 2nd largest prison in the state and is surrounded by wheat fields.  Brooke also spent a lot of time giving us all kinds of pointers about places to eat and other info.

Downtown was our next destination to grab a bite to eat.  We went to Olives, where we each ordered a small pizza.  The food was GREAT and so was the atmosphere.  The guy who helped us was obviously being trained, but he was awesome.  The gal training him wasn’t as nice, but she wasn’t horrible either.  It seemed to me that she was more interested in flirting with the new guy than helping hungry customers.

After getting some nourishment, we headed to our lodging.  We stayed in a LOVELY Bed & Breakfast set smack dab in the middle of some vineyards.  This lovely location is exactly what we were looking for.  Three glorious nights would be spent here, and we couldn’t think of a better spot.  The Walla Walla Inns at the Vineyard is owned by Debbie and Rick Johnson, who also own Walla  Walla Faces winery.  They left us a bottle of their ’06 Syrah, which was very good.  We were sad that we didn’t make it to their downtown Walla Walla tasting room, but will be sure to hit them the next time we’re in town.

The only negative about our Inn at the Vineyard was that we couldn’t get Internet access.  Rick tried to help us and got his provider on the phone.  My husband spent at least thirty minutes on the phone with technical support, to no avail.  Rick told us this happens only with Mac users.  So, if you use a Mac and need to get some work done, you’ll need to head downtown to their tasting room, Starbucks or Olive to get online.  They are working on this problem, so hopefully it’ll be solved in the near future.

Next Up:  Walla Walla Day 2

Back To Top