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Wine walkers

Blog: Winemaker's Journal

By Rick Steigmeyer

January 18, 2010

A line of eager wine revelers wound out the door of the Black Dog Frame Shop and around the block to register for the Winterfest Wine Walk in Chelan Saturday.

About 150 people prepaid the $30 for sips of wine from a dozen local wineries in Lake Chelan's newly approved American Viticultural Area. Organizers expected another 50 to buy their wrist bands at the door. Instead, they had to scramble for more glasses and wine notebooks. All told, close to 300 people took the tour.

Fanfare over the valley's wines is justified. I tried a few as part of my taxing duties as a wine blogger and found every one of them to be tasty and worthy of more investigation. I marked down several wineries that I hoped to visit in the near future, particularly Karma Vineyards, Tildio Winery and Benson Vineyards, all whose wines were new to me and very good, I thought.

My favorite wine of the day, however, was the Tsillan Cellars' Piccolo Roso, a deep, luscious blend of 66 percent merlot and 33 percent cabernet sauvignon. Delicious!

Organizers did a great job of bringing the wineries downtown so many people could get a taste of several different wines without driving all over the countryside. I only tasted reds, but no two wines were that similar. The diversity of tastes was really remarkable.

Wine tasting tables were set up at the rear of a dozen downtown businesses, letting people browse through shops and hotel lobbies while they tasted the wines and enjoyed some delicious appetizers prepared by local restaurants. I don't know if anyone spilled wine on $80 Pendelton shirts and $500 oil paintings for sale in some of the shops, but most shopowners seemed tickled to have a good flow of potential customers in their shops in the dead of winter.

"This is great. It's just like a summer day up here," said Dave Weldy, co-owner of the Culinary Apple about the flow of folks who were buying a few items and checking out the store for next time.

Hats off to Lake Chelan's chamber and visitor's center and local wineries for a well-planned event.