Melissa and I had a great time at the blogging conference and as promised here are some of the adventures that we had. I highly recommend taking a trip to Walla Walla some weekend over the summer, it is a beautiful spot for a weekend away. We had the pleasure of staying off the beaten path at the Capri Motel which was so quiet and wonderful and our neighbors were great.

The fantastic Capri Motel

The conference was filled with people and winery staff pouring and talking about their wines. We were both thankful to have some wine after the long drive.

Beginning of the Conference

Sherry Sampling

We had some errands to run for the winery so we headed over to Jim’s Supply to pick up wire. Doug and Dan are great guys, we got to tour the place, meet the chickens, and learn exactly where the best restaurants in town are.

Doug and Dan of Jim's Supply

Their suggestion to try Brasserie Four was perfect.

Brasserie Four

Beautiful and delicious.

The next day we loaded up on a school bus and toured several wineries. At Gifford Hirlinger’s, Frank stole the show and had his picture taken with many adoring fans including Melissa.

Frank and Melissa

Out in the Vineyard

This was a beautiful winery with a very similar vision to Colter’s Creek. A real focus on growing the grapes on site and making the wine to create a closed loop system for wine making – a way to enrich the experience of quality and character from grape to glass.

Next we met at the Walla Walla Foundry an amazing collaboration primarily focused on art but more recently adding wine to the mediums. Three local winemakers shared their stories, time, and wines with us.

Melissa and art

The wines.

Amazing Steel Horse outside the Foundry

For our final destination, we were treated to an incredible view at Leonetti Vineyards, lunch of organic and sustainably grown beef sliders, Leonetti and Doubleback wines. Maybe one of the most romantic lunches I have attended.

Our lunch spot for the afternoon.

Checking out the view.

This year’s Savor Idaho was a success! Over 900 people attended the ’sold-out’ event at the Boise Botanical Gardens on a beautiful June afternoon. We poured 3 wines; 2009 Estate Chardonnay, 2009 Rose of Syrah, and 2008 Cab/Malbec. We had a great time meeting many of the Southern Idaho wine folks and trying their wines, as well as sharing our wines with others. We look forward to next year’s event, June 12th, 2011. Save the date!

Napa Valley gets a lot of attention for the wines and grapes that come from the region. I wanted to post this short video about some of the perhaps lesser known sustainable practices several wineries are using at their vineyards. It is great to see what others are doing and what sustainability looks like. This little excerpt gives a quick overview and some visual heft to a term that is used so much these days that we sometimes over look it. It is exciting that vineyards in Washington and Idaho also use and are moving towards similar practices. More information about a sustainable viticulture program in Washington here and info about our efforts at Colter’s Creek here.

Enormous Old Cork Oak

Robert Hooke in the mid 1660s was fascinated with the structure of cork under the microscope noting that it resembeled a “honey-comb” structure and was much like the “cells” where monks prayed and slept. This story is told in the book To Cork or Not to Cork and the author contends that Hooke called the structures cells due to this likenss and coined the term cells “given to the building blocks of all living things” (p6).

Cork Oak forests support a diverse ecosystem in themselves, and because people have become attuned to the parameters of harvesting with the trees, it can be seen as an impressive symbiotic relationship that has developed between people and the oaks. They are native to Spain, Portugal, North Africa, France and Italy and cover vast areas in these countries. Although folks have attempted to grow them in the states (California), the bark did not create the desired cork properties and basically failed for the purposes of harvesting proving that indeed some things cannot be replicated outside their natural geographic environment.

Amazingly, harvesting the cork does not harm the tree. This is especially impressive because due to the biological make up of trees, removing large strips of bark can sometimes result in a fatal injury or severe damage compromising the health of the tree. Just underneath the bark, the layers of a tree support the entire plant because food and water is moved through transportation systems housed in these layers.

There are some videos available online showing the harvesting of cork, but I liked this one best: Cork Harvest in Catalonia.

References and additional Resources
Cork and the Cork System
How Stuff Works
Absolute Astronomy
Jelinek
World’s Largest Cork Tree

With all the constant media barrage regarding our current economic state, the seemingly unending discovery of some new Ponzi scheme, bank deceit, and in general, the unbelievable amounts of bonus money being doled out, it is somehow still delightful to read about one more outrageous act of swindling. The Billionaire’s Vinegar is definitely on the top of my book list right now. The author, Benjamin Wallace, does a presentation on the “price of happiness” which was filmed at the Taste3 event in Napa for TED. If you haven’t found TED yet get ready to stay glued to the computer learning about everything you can imagine and more.

I am an unabashed Monty Python fan, so naturally I love John Cleese. What I didn’t realize is that he has an avid interest in wine! The series called “Wine for the Confused”, was originally put together as a special on Food Network and I somehow missed the whole thing. This is great information for those new to all the facets of wine making and tasting and equally educational for more experience winos! Another great site to chek out for more info on the experience of tasting wine is Wine 101 — especially their guide: A Sensory Users’s Manual.