Monthly Archives: October 2006

Rotary Club’s Grape & Gourmet a Huge Success

The Bellingham Bay Rotary Club will host its third annual Grape and Gourmet food and wine event on Sunday, November 5 at the Best Western Lakeway Inn in Bellingham. Over the past 25 years I’ve attended a number of wine festivals and this one certainly has to rate with the best of them. What makes […]

Host Your Own Wine Tasting Party

The holiday season is nearly upon us and wine tasting is a great indoor activity that just naturally seems to go well with the holidays. Hosting your own wine tasting party can be a fun, easy, and relatively low-cost social event. Certainly, you can open up a few bottles of wine, toss in some munchies […]

2006 Harvest Update

The 2006 growing season turned out to be a bit of an odd duck. The weather in Eastern Washington fell into a stop/start-mode during the early part of the season before the temperatures really cranked up during the late summer months. The result is that winemakers were scrambling a bit in early September as everything […]

New Releases Can Hit the Market Any Time of Year

It’s a busy, yet exciting time of the year for Pacific Northwest wineries as grapes from the 2006 vintage are being harvested and crushed. So when do winemakers release their latest vintages? There’s no hard and fast rule on this one. White wines fermented in stainless steel are usually released in the spring following harvest, […]

Tasty Little Tuscan Blend is Only $10

Several weeks ago I talked about the differences between Old World wines and New World wines. Old World wines, you may recall, are European wines that are generally lighter in body and have subtle, earthy flavors. American palates tend to lean towards New World wines, which come primarily from the United States, Australia and Chile. […]