Woodinville Day 2
DAY 2: Breakfast was honestly a half let-down. The food, atmosphere and service was fabulous at the Commons for breakfast, but the coffee was ... lacking. In fact, I can't remember a time that I didn't finish a cup of coffee outside of bad work coffee or dunlin donuts. Especially in the state where Starbucks was born! I didn't try any of their specialty coffee drinks, but I hope for your sake they are better than the coffee. The veggie scramble was quite fab, with avocado included in the scramble (I will do this at home now!). There was yogurt for my friend too, since there were no chicken coops outside, we couldn't guarantee that the chickens that layer the eggs had a happy life.
We knew we had a plan after day 1, that we wanted to start with something fun, and since St. Michelle opens early we thought we would start with a bubbly tasting there to round out the day. The sparkling tasting was great, because they had a well priced sparkling rose. We also knew that the tasting was well worth it since we were going to be using the 15% towards our purchase that I shipped home. We already tasted the Indian Wells Cabarnet, which we will certainly buy again, well worth the price and something we all agree on (A MIRACLE). The sparkling rose we also had with our mother's day brunch. Could you ask for anything better than a sparkling rose, your children to come over and make brunch and a bouquet of fabulous flowers? I think it's the perfect mother's day, so that is exactly what we did :)
We then had a few places left on our list and continued on with day 2 of wine tasting ...
MARK RYAN - If we were to pick our favorite interior decorating for the wine tasting rooms, this would win. Think reclaimed wood with wine barrels and factory cart-like elements. I am obviously a fan. Mark Ryan was known for big reds, and to be honest I wasn't 'wow-ed' by any of the reds except for the priciest, which was out of my price range for something that didn't even stick in my brain taste-wise. I was glad that I had bought at DeLille. They were much more unique in their style of reds. They did have the only pinot noir we saw in Washington, but it turns out the grapes were from Oregon and only bought because it was the winery that Mark Ryan and his wife were married at so they exchange some grapes. Boo.
FIDELITAS - Fidelitas had just reds on their tasting menu, just like Mark Ryan, but had one that I thought stood out of the crowd. In this case it was the Malbec. It was cedary- and spicy but without that young bite that so many Malbec's have. They made less than 500 cases of this Malbec, so it was a special one and I know someone will enjoy it at a good Father's Day BBQ. {so mom start brainstorming something fun for dad's day dinner}.
BRIAN CARTER- We headed out to Brian Carter, which is a stand-alone tasting room, unlike the previous two in the "nice strip mall". A cute little place, they had a variety of good wines, but since we were packing our wines in our suitcases, they really needed to stand out of the crowd for us to buy. We might have brought along as few clothes as possible for two stylish girls on a week long trip, but we really only had room for 5-6 bottles weight-wise.
LONG SHADOWS - Long Shadows was a really great tasting room, with a fabulous bartender (is that what they are?) who we had some great conversations with. It was important to talk about the wines here at Long Shaddows because of their distinct way of making wine. If you think about it, each place had one main vintner, and maybe a few helpers, but their main work is over a short period of time, and then returning to taste over longer periods of time before the vintage is ready. Long Shaddows brought in multiple vintners to come in and blend wines that they are good at so they have LOTS of GREAT wines and different styles. I have to say, I loved everything we tasted here and wish they could ship to Rhode Island. My friend bought the tempranillo with a cute Owl (go Rice!) on the bottle -- i think the name was Saggi, and I got the Bordeaux Blend - Chester Kidder which is another State Dinner wine which we loved. If I remember correctly, the Cab was sold out, and also really really good, as well as the merlot being quite delish.
ALEXANDRIA NICOLE - We almost missed our last stop on the tour-de-wines in Woodinville because of the odd location of the door. Yes, it's in this huge building at the main Rotary, but how to get there was unclear until we walked down the road. The tasting room is located in the basement and nice and cool with the slate and wood beam decor. We just happened to meet even more lovely people working here, and really enjoyed the conversation. I just so happened to buy some Jonboy Caramel's in Seattle and we shared in some Key Lime Sea Salt Caramels and discussed how Marshmallows really should be homemade. Note about the talking to the people you encounter on your wine-tasting adventures: we learned valuable things about where to go next, how to get wine back without shipping it, and a bit of an extra taste of some fun wines not on the menus- so be nice, it goes a long way. We also made some pretty great impromptu friends as well. I purchased a nice Albarino here for mother's day. I hope she likes it!
What happens when you have two 20 something year old tourists and a new cross-walking "tool" after some wine-tasting ... The photo above of course! So it turns out that they started this initiative to help with pedestrian crosswalks. You take it out of the bucket on one side and put it back in the bucket on the opposite side. Let me tell you what would happen with these if they put them in Boston or the Northeast. Besides the possibility of them getting frozen in the bottom of the bucket, there probably wouldn't be any flags to actually use. Can you say scavenger hunt for college kids? Amusement for teens and drinking folk taking longer to cross the street with flag in hand ... the possible amusements are fabulous, and end use - probably not gonna happen here.
THE STATION PIZZA - We knew long before heading out to the west coast that we would be eating here on Tuesday. We were checking out the different places to have food, noticed there is a purple cafe in Woodinville as well, and had it as a back up plan, until we saw this place. ALL DAY TUESDAY is HAPPY HOUR PRICES >> WHICH INCLUDES PIZZA. Vacation, wine tasting, pizza happy hour and a beautiful day? Yes, thank you.
Two days of tastings were perfect for us, we were just about wine-ed out (at least in this one location) and were off to Portland in the morning for some Pinot Noirs, Stumptown Coffee, Blue Star Donuts, and lots lots more fun.