Tuesday, April 20, 2010

This Month's Wineries: Upland Estates & Goose Ridge










The wineries Gayle chose for us to visit this month were incredible! We started with Upland Estates located on Snipes Mtn, Washington's 10th AVA. While we were tasting several of their wines, proprietor Todd Newhouse, shared with us some of the truly remarkable history of this family owned and operated winery. This is a picture of one of the vinifera grapevines planted by William B. Bridgman in 1917 and is the actual vine used on their label today. It kind of looks like the Keeper-of-the-Vineyard to me..... Established in 1934, Upland was the first winery in Washington to commercially produce fortified wine - the wine we drink today. For more history about this award winning winery and the mountain on which it sits, visit http://www.uplandwinery.com/









The view from atop Snipes Mountain. Approximately 800 acres are devoted to wine grapes used in Upland's wines and in 20 other wineries. An additional 500 acres are devoted to cherries, apricots, nectarines, peaches, prunes, pears, apples, juice grapes, and table grapes.





The fruit trees are all in bloom - beautiful!




Our ubiquitous dust devils. They're actually pretty cool to watch. All of a sudden they'd appear...then just as quickly...poof...they're gone!





 

"Hmmmm, I wonder if I could do something like this...."




It's wild to think that these vines are almost 100 years old and still producing!! I bet they're really spooky looking in the dark...with a full moon....


Goose Ridge was our last stop. Their new facility is beautiful - to the left there's a big fireplace (they had a fire going for us) with big comfy leather furniture in front of it, in the center there's several pub tables with bar stools around them and the tasting room is to the right. Everyone brought an appetizer/salad/desert to share and as usual it was awesome!