A Little W(h)ining

For several years now Nicole and I have been heading over to central Washington each President's Day weekend for wine tasting.  The area just past Yakima has a group of wineries called Rattlesnake Hills, and they host a Wine and Chocolate event each year at this time.  This year we were joined by fellow sailors Jason and Christy, and also met up with Heather, Jodi, and Danny, friends from Nicole's work.  In recent years Rattlesnake Hills has been adding wineries to their group, and this year they were up to 18 wineries, which presents a bit of a challenge to visit all of them during the event weekend.  Luckily it's a three day event so we could spread out the fun a bit.  We knew Christy would be up to the task, but Jason mentioned something about not really liking wine so I was a bit worried, but he was either understating his wine drinking prowess or he warmed up quickly.

Nicole and I were trying hard to show restraint in purchasing this year.  With our sailing trip departure just over a month away, we have been concerned that we already have quite a bit of wine on the boat and are only allowed a couple bottles each going into Canada.  We agreed that this would be a tasting weekend only with no buying, and that decision lasted all the way to the second winery we visited.  Having done this trip in the past with just the two of us, we have been known to fill the trunk of the car with cases of wine, keep our bags and toiletries in the back seat, and go on our merry way.  This year with four people and their associated luggage, we were thankfully limited in the amount of wine we could bring back.  I did, however, notice an unspoken agreement between the two couples that the luggage was arranged around the passengers inside the car to provide more space in the trunk for wine.  In the end we all had a great time and tasted some great wines.  For those that like statistics and/or gory details:

3 days of wine tasting
18 wineries visited
122 wines sampled (approximate number, for obvious reasons)
47 bottles of wine purchased (20 by us, 27 for Jason and Christy)
1 wine glass broken
4 livers slowly recovering