just returned from walla walla for the second time and had an even better time than before. the main focus of the trip was to blend my new wines for the drunken goat, but we of course found plenty of time for eating, drinking and getting in to trouble as usual. our first night we went to one of the town’s great restaurants, the whitehouse-crawford. chef jamie guerin (such a sweetheart!) has a new spring menu featuring some beautiful local produce. one of the salads was a mixture of greens and herbs that had been picked in the woods nearby. the fresh sorrel and lemon balm were so brightly flavored they just danced in my mouth. one of my favorite salads he makes has chunks of smoked trout along with some bacon. it is no secret how i feel about anything made with bacon….delish. to top it off we had some nice toasty ciabbatta, just out of the wood-burning oven, with foie tourchon that just melted in my mouth. when you get to walla walla, this place is a must.

saturday we got set up in the back wine storage room at saviah cellars to create the house red wine for the drunken goat. rich funk, the owner of the winery, and tom who is one of his assistant wine makers had pulled out a number of varietals from barrel for us to sample and blend. along with a couple of girlfriends of mine who have worked with a lot of wine (and like me have drunken quite a bit) we began to taste through a number of syrahs from different vineyards, some grenache, cabernets and mouvedre. i am a huge fan of taste tests and also of science experiments, and this pretty much felt like a combination of the two. rich was measuring with beakers and we were all taking tasting notes and discussing, which had the nicest nose and the smoothest finish. in the end we came up with a beautiful blend of 50% grenache, 37.5% of two different syrahs, and 12.5% mouvedre. it is smooth, had a bit of dark fruit and a little spice and should go great with food though it is lovely just to sip on its own. that night was party time….rich and his wife anita invited over a bunch of friends from the wine business, which means, well, drinking a lot of wine. with rich, anita and tom as my sous chefs for the day we made a bunch of food to celebrate with as well. shaved brussels sprouts with mushrooms and sheep’s milk cheese tossed in a light lemon and maple vinaigrette; sautéed lamb with artichoke hearts and strawberries; scallop, ham and asparagus risotto; and coconut braised pork sandwiches. i of course did not eat very much but focused on all of the tasty local wines. the new rose from saviah cellars is beautiful as well as the gewürztraminer from sleight of hand which is one of my favorite whites from walla walla, and i am not just saying that because we love the winemaker trey who happens to be pearl jam’s number one fan (hence the name of the winery).

i guess we went through about 37 bottles that night so you can imagine that none of us were feeling particularly great the next morning. i was happy we had already blended the red wine because our foggy heads would not have done very well with keeping up with all of the red varietals we worked with. for the white wine, we were focusing mainly on the semillon, which is a beautiful wine on its own, and adding either chardonnay or viogner to round it out just a bit. we went with the viogner at 5% with the rest semillon, creating a crisp, round, dry wine that will go great with the menu at the goat.

the rest of our easter sunday was spent at the local bar the green. the rain ruined our hopes for a fun game of beer pong out in the back area, but we managed to entertain ourselves just fine. a couple blue moons (ok well maybe more than a couple) and a heaping pile of hot wings was the perfect way to celebrate the holiday though i was a little bummed that i did not have an easter egg hunt to go to. no chocolate bunnies for me this year. if you are looking for a spot to go drink some wine and eat some tasty food, i highly recommend walla walla. go say hi to trey at sleight of hand and quiz him about eddie vedder and of course his beautiful wines, go say hi to rich at saviah cellars and ask him for some white zin (inside joke) and then head over to k vitners and try to find charles (easy to spot if he is not off traveling the globe, just look for a big gray fro), just don’t tell him how much you love his wines (even though you will).