The town so nice they named it twice

So the plan was to be out of Enterprise and on the road to Walla Walla, Washington by 5:15 p.m. on Friday so we would be there in time for a delicious dinner to kick off our wine tasting weekend. I was supposed to be waiting outside of clinic with the car all ready to go......I had the car all packed up and ready to go when Keith called-meet him at the hospital instead of clinic at 5:30-OK-no problem. Then he called when I was on my way to the hospital-maybe it would be more like 6-I already knew where this was going. Long story short-we finally left at about 6:45....I'm glad that's happened so many times that I know just to bring a book with me everywhere!

By the time we got there it was almost 9 and not many restaurants were still open but we lucked out when we drove past T. Maccarone's, which was just perfect. We just had some small bites and of course they had delicious wine-the first wine of the weekend was a Walla Walla Vintners Sangiovese-yum!

Saturday was (mostly) dedicated to wine tasting. We had a few wineries that we had been told not to miss and most of them were on the south side of Walla Walla-so that's where we spent the day.

From Enterprise

We got to the first winery, Va Piano, at about 10:45 and the 'Open' sign was out-so perfect-right-well not really....we were there about 15 minutes before they technically opened. Our showing up frazzled the already very frazzled woman working there (which may explain why this were kind of unorganized to begin with....). Anyway, the wines were delicious just like we had heard and we ended up buying a bottle of their 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, which we weren't even supposed to taste but the bottle was out and she poured it for us before she noticed the mistake-score one for us!

We then we to a kind of crappy, corporate, very manicured winery called NortStar. Not only were their wines boring, but they had a $7 tasting fee-so not worth it at all! Enough said.

After driving by another winery that at least had the decency to admit out front that they had an $8 fee (!?!?) we were getting a little down, this was our first time tasting in Walla Walla-was this what it was like?? I was starting to miss my favorite Salem area wineries like Mystic and Witness Tree, when we pulled into a place called Glen Fiona that looked very unassuming.

From Enterprise

This place was great! It looked like it was a one man show and he was pouring the wine for us. Not only was there not a tasting fee (yay!), but his wine was much more interesting than anything we had tasted yet and it had the best prices-another score for us! We bought the 2005 Walla Walla Valley Syrah and the 2004 Columbia Valley Claret. The Claret was one of my favorite wines of the whole weekend-I can't wait to drink it!

We were very happy after leaving there, which I'm sure had nothing that we had already been to 3 tasting rooms in about an hour..:) The next place held two wineries in one building-trouble!!! The wineries were Trust and Chateau Rollat. Both wineries were very good and we bought kind of a lot of wine there including Chateau Rollat's 2008 Semillon (I think the best white of the weekend!) and their 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon. Things got a little more interesting when the winemaker for Trust came out and started pouring for us-it turns out that he grew up in northern Ohio too and he happened to go to whatever high school my high school, the Norwalk Truckers (no, I'm not kidding), beat in the 1974 Ohio State football championship-will I never be far enough away to not hear about the Truckers?? Whatever-we still bought a 2007 Syrah...

You might think that we're done enough tasting for one day at this point...not quite yet. For our final stop we went to Gifford Hirlinger. Here we were met by two adorable pups and the winemaker's dad. While we were tasting their great wines, we were also having a meandering conversation that hit on everything from archaeology to rural doctoring and ended up with us getting a tour of the behind the scenes at the winery. Not surprisingly we walked out of there with a bottle of the 2005 Merlot and the 2007 Estate Malbec.

The wine tasting portion of the day was over and the college football portion was just beginning. We found a place in Waitsberg to watch the games.

From Enterprise

We hung out here until the Notre Dame-Michigan game was over and left for an early dinner at the Whoopemup Hollow Cafe

From Enterprise

This was by far the best dinner I've had since I've been out here in Eastern Oregon! I had the ribs (amazing!), I think Keith had the special...I don't remember what it was because I was too busy devouring my dinner :)

We all know how the Ohio State game ended-no need to talk about it...

Well-that was day one of Walla Walla! Hopefully no one has been keeping count of all the wines!