Wanna Walla Walla?

Miss Cozy has been more than busy with another thing that starts with “W” and that would be work. That’s not always a bad thing it just keeps her from things she considers Cozy. Like the wine weekend we spent in Walla Wall now 2 weeks ago – Geez Louise where does time go?

I want this post to serve as a very general outline for someone who also want to explore Washington’s premiere wine valley aptly named Walla Walla (which means rapid streams or many waters).
The drive from Seattle takes 4.5 hours. All of it is a pretty drive and really wasn’t so bad at all. The funny thing is is that you soon enter Washington’s “desert” climate – the landscape reminded me of Calabasas, California – lots of dried rolling hills the only difference being the beautiful snow capped mountains in the background!

Get this – opposite to Seattle, Walla Walla receives minimal rainfall and is also called “the Palm Springs” of Washington. It totally felt like that just without cacti and Palm Trees! Our weather was absolutely blue sky gorgeous!
And just like California, Washington grows lots of lavender too!

We stopped for lunch in the town of Yakima, a wine region unto itself but this was nothing to write home about. Perhaps we will learn more about this area in the future but we are definitely rushing back anytime soon…

We would soon find out that the town of Walla Walla, on the other hand, was really cute and quite charming! But first a stop at our first winery – L’Ecole No. 41. L’Ecole N° 41 is a second generation, family-owned artisan winery located in the historic Frenchtown School depicted on the label. Founded in 1983, it is the third oldest winey in the Walla Walla. It was interesting being in a wine country that was still so young! My research maestro Marc put L’Ecole on the map as our first stop since we had enjoyed a lovely bottle of the chardonney depicted in my recent Orcas Island post! We had a great time here but soon it was time to hit the road!

Walla Walla is not built up anywhere near Napa or even Santa Barbara so there are not a whole lot of hotel options. The big hotel in Walla Walla is the Marcus Whitman Hotel. Rooms start at $99 but as it was a holiday weekend and only pricey sweets were available we opted to spend more on dinner and stay at the Holiday Inn Express. Big rooms and non-ugly bed spreads. I was totally fine with this and about 3 minutes driving from town!
Rock n’ Roll – this place is so cool – our first stop in town was the brand new Charles Smith tasting room!

Charles Smith is a far cry from Charles Shaw aka Two Buck Chuck. No comparison whatsoever! We discovered these wines back in L.A. and served them at our going away party – a combo of great wine and pretty cool marketing – Charles Smith used to manage bands in Scandanavia for 11 years. This space looks like it could hold some pretty kick ass parties that is for sure. When we asked if they had a wine club we were told they didn’t – Charles wants everyone to be able to attend his events.

We found out that Charles ex-girlfriend is the one who designs all the labels…does she really think he deserves a halo?

Still in the mood to explore a little bit we decided to hop in the car and drive around a bit – we had a lot to explore and not very much time!

This map above is of the overall wine country but Walla Wall itself is divided into North, South, East and West. We decided to drive to the Southside winery area, getting a feel for the area and finally checking out Va Piano.

This winery had a bit of a Tuscan feel but was not so cozy on the inside and we decided not to stick around for a tasting.

We also saw several modern wineries which although might have had delicious wine did not beckon us to come in. All this talk of wine was making us hungry and luckily we had a 7:30 dinner reservation at Brasserie Four located right in the heart of downtown.

What a perfect dinner we had here! I honestly had one of the most delicious chicken dishes I’ve ever had (with sherry and tarragon and lots of perfectly little cubed vegetables and flowers!) and Marc went traditional delicious steak with perfect frittes!

I have to mention that I also had a super fresh salad of julienned golden and red beets, fennel and carrots and we shared some yummy dessert with rhubarb (very popular this time in the Northwest).

As we left the restaurant a table on the outside patio asked how we enjoyed out meal. I had noticed these 2 women and a man waiting to be seated – they looked very posh and snobby and I was so delighted to find them absolutely friendly and funny giving us tips for our explorations for the following day.
We could hardly wait for Walla Walla day #2 – we had Dunham Cellars on our list and dinner at the much talked about Whitehouse Crawford! More soon!