June 12, 2010
Winery of the Week:  Barnard Griffin Winery
Featured benefit or activity:  Compare Cabernet Sauvignon from two different cab vintages revealing the difference in artist changes as well as age in each wine. You will taste the difference. Same winemaker, different sense of time
..different flavor profile.
Featured Wine: 2006 Reserve Cabernet, 2007 Reserve Cabernet
Wine Profile:

June 12, 2010
Winery of the Week: Terra Blanca
Featured benefit or activity: Enjoy a vineyard hike with owner ReNae Pilgrim and owner/ winemaker Keith Pilgrim and learn about how Red Mountain wines through a reserve libraried vertical tasting with them both of a specially chosen wine.
Featured Wine:

June 19, 2010
Winery of the Week:  Desert Wind Winery
Featured benefit or activity:  Join Desert Wind Winemaker Greg Fries and
blend your own Bordeaux-style red wine. Attendees can choose their own blend ratio and blend a glass of wine using our 2009 Merlot, Cabernet and Cabernet Franc.
Featured Wine:  2008 Ruah (Bordeaux-style red blend)
Wine Profile:  A Bordeaux-style blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, Ruah is Desert Wind's flagship wine. Soft yet full on the palate, it features notes of bright cherry, blackberry and spice with a slightly earthy finish

June 19, 2010
Winery of the Week: Gooseridge Estate Winery
Featured benefit or activity: Join Goose Ridge Estate Winery as we transform our tasting room into a sensory laboratory! Increase your appreciation for fine wine by honing in on your ability to describe what you taste and smell.  Enjoy our Reserve Wines while experiencing this sensory education.
Featured Wine: 2007 Reserve Malbec 
Wine Profile:

June 26, 2010 
Winery of the Week: Steppe Cellars
Featured benefit or activity: Compare Merlot from two different growing areas to learn the qualities that each AVA brings to the wine.  You will barrel sample Merlot from the Yakima Valley AVA and the Wahluke Slope AVA.  Use sensory standards to detect the aromas and flavors that are typical for the Merlot varietal, but also for the charecteristics these two growing areas bring to the wine.  Sample the finished Merlot, which is a blend of grapes from both the Yakima Valley and Wahluke Slope.
Featured Wine: Merlot 2006
Wine Profile:  37% Wahluke Slope / 63% Yakima Valley.  Aged for 16 months in Eastern European and American oak.

July 3, 2010
Winery of the Week:  Kestrel Vintners
Featured benefit or activity: Sensory wine assessment training — identifying the unique aromas and flavors of Yakima Valley wines.   
Featured Wines: 05 Falcon Series Merlot or 06 Signature Edition Late Harvest Chardonnay.

July 3, 2010
Winery of the Week: Naches Heights Vineyard
Featured benefit or activity: Learn the effects of a higher elevation, cool climate growing region and its relationship to wine and its quality.  We will discuss growing grapes sustainably through the L.I.V.E. and Salmon Safe program as well as organically and bio-dynamically.
Featured Wine:  15% off all purchases during tour.  

July 10, 2010
Winery of the Week:  Severino Cellars
Featured benefit or activity: Join winemaker Severino Samaniego in our private wine cellar for a vertical tasting of our Cabernet Sauvignon.  Taste three vintages: 2004, 2005 and 2006.  Come and compare the difference in each of these wines and learn how each growing year gives us different wine!
Featured Wine: 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon
Wine Profile:  This Cabernet is full of aromas of blackberry, vanilla and slight hints of carmel.  Copeland Vineyard, Yakima Valley. 

July 10, 2010
Winery of the Week: Olsen Estates 
Featured benefit or activity: Cheese and wine have long been thought of as the perfect match. But which wines and cheeses are best suited? Experience the taste differences between three very unique cheeses. Try them with several different wines; and discover your most enjoyable partnership. While they last; attendees will be treated to the Olsen's famous organic blueberries, accompanied by their award winning Syrah!
Featured Wine: 2007 Heritage 
Wine Profile: The genesis of this wine was to celebrate the Olsen family's 100th Anniversary in the Yakima Valley. Our winemaker Kyle Johnson selected the very finest Syrah from the vintage to blend for this wine

July 17, 2010
Winery of the Week: Steppe Cellars
Featured benefit or activity:  Tour our vineyard to see the grapes at their summer stage of development.  Learn about some of the growing practices we use and why we use them.  Compare these two vintages of Riesling to find the similarities and see how different this varietal can be from vintage to vintage. Discover what foods work well with this wine, as you pair some different food flavors with each Riesling vintage.
Featured Wine: Steppe Cellars Riesling
Wine Profile:  Both Rieslings single vineyard wines - Dalkeith Farm - Rattlesnake Hills AVA - within the Yakima Valley. Both have high crisp acidity.  The 2006 Dry Riesling has 1% residual sugar and earned a double gold.  The 2008 Riesling has 3% residual sugar and earned a gold medal.

July 17, 2010
Winery of the Week: Oakwood Cellars
Featured benefit or activity: The Lemberger grape of the Yakima Valley.  Discover this softer red wine and how it arrived in Washington State.  The styles of wine you can make from this grape and how well it pairs with different foods
Featured Wine: Lemberger grape

July 24, 2010
Winery of the Week: Thurston Wolfe Winery
Featured benefit or activity: Barrel sample profiling Petite Sirah and discussing the basis for barrel aging.
Featured Wine: 2007 Zephyr Ridge Petite Sirah.

July 24, 2010
Winery of the Week: Chandler Reach Vineyard
Featured benefit or activity: Join us for a vineyard tour to see firsthand where the magic begins.  Expand your knowledge with a brief vineyard tour followed by a walk through our cellar cave.  Learn about the art of winemaking and sample straight from the barrel.  Tours will depart at 1:30 p.m., 2:45 p.m., and 4:00 p.m.  Tasting fee waived for Grown to Greatness participants.
Featured Wine:  2007 Ventoso  The Turbo-Merlot!  With the richness of Merlot (90%)  and the sparkle of Cabernet Sauvignon (10%), this well-balanced blend packs a punch.  Flavors of black cherry and raspberry subtly linger on with a long finish.

July 31, 2010
Winery of the Week: Wilridge Winery
Featured Wine: All Wilridge winery wines.
Benefit/Activity : Sommelier Damon Lobato conducts a blind and component tasting from wines that are grown organically from Naches Heights, Washington.  Naches Heights will soon be Washington's newest AVA with all 40 acres being farmed organically.

August 7, 2010
Winery of the Week: Kana Winery
Featured benefit or activity: Participate in blending trials of Yakima Valley grown Rhone varietals from the barrel with winemaker Ben Grossman and owner Dr. Palmer Wright.
Featured Wine: Current release of Dark Star, Kana's flagship Rhone Red blend. 20% off 12 bottles.

August 7, 2010
Winery of the Week: Steppe Cellars
Featured benefit or activity: Tour our vineyard to see the grapes at their summer stage of development.  Learn about some of the growing practices we use and why we use them.  Compare these two vintages of Riesling to find the similarities and see how different this varietal can be from vintage to vintage. Discover what foods work well with this wine, as you pair some different food flavors with each Riesling vintage.
Featured Wine: Steppe Cellars Riesling
Wine Profile: Both Rieslings are single vineyard wines and both have high crisp acidity.  The 2006 Dry Riesling has 1% residual sugar and earned a double gold.  The 2008 Riesling has 3% residual sugar and earned a gold medal.

August 14, 2010
Winery of the Week:  Wineglass Cellars
Featured benefit or activity: Winemaker David Lowe will illuminate how age changes the flavor profile of a wine.  He will pour samples of our vintages 2000 & 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon, Elerding Vineyard, Yakima Valley, both of which come from the same rows of grapes in the same vineyard. 
Featured Wine: 15% discount on bottles of 2000 & 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon, Elerding Vineyard, Yakima Valley.
Wine Profile: This Cabernet is consistently thick, rich and full of ripe heavy fruit.  These intensely flavored grapes are a result of the quick draining soil, drip irrigation and canopy management.  The long growing period of the Yakima Valley along with our hot summer days and cool evenings create a structural balance of sugars and acids.  In addition, we barrel this wine in 75% new French oak which lends subtle toast flavors and soft tannins to create an elegant and well balanced wine worthy of aging.

August 21, 2010
Winery of the Week:  Two Mountain Winery

Featured benefit or activity: Ever wonder what wine grapes look and taste like when they first go through verasion (color change)?  Come join our vineyard manager Patrick Rawn and look, learn, and taste grapes that have just completed verasion and what this means.

Featured Wine: Current vintage of Merlot

August 21, 2010
Winery of the Week:  Barnard Griffin Winery
Featured benefit or activity:  Compare Cabernet Sauvignon from two different cab vintages revealing the difference in artist changes as well as age in each wine. You will taste the difference. Same winemaker, different sense of time
..different flavor profile.
Featured Wine: 2006 Reserve Cabernet, 2007 Reserve Cabernet
Wine Profile:

August 28, 2010
Winery of the Week: Knight Hill Winery
Featured benefit or activity: Taste 2009 Cab Sauv, Merlot, & Petite Sirah from the barrel.  Then create your own blend and compare it to 2008 Rook's Red.
Featured Wine: 15% off single bottles, 30% off cases on 2009 Cabernet, Merlot, Petite Sirah
Wine Profile:  StoneTree vineyard's red wine grapes have full body and structure produced by the abundant heat units.

August 28, 2010
Winery of the Week: Chinook Wines
Featured benefit or activity: Compare/taste Cabernet Franc wines representing different Yakima Valley vineyard sites. We will explain our winemaking style and vineyard selection criteria. You will tour the Chinook estate Cabernet Franc vineyard with owner & viticulturist Clay Mackey to follow the progress of grapes for harvest 2010.
Featured Wine: Current vintage of Cabernet Franc.

September 4, 2010 
Winery of the Week: Hightower Cellars
Featured benefit or activity: Come break bread at Hightower Cellars — bread made from the yeast on our grapes.  Leslie Mackie, founder, co-owner and head baker of Macrina Bakery, and Kelly and Tim Hightower, owners and winemakers of Hightower Cellars, introduced an artisan bread made from grape yeast cultivated from Hightower Cellars estate vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon grapes.  We will tell you the whole story when you visit us and taste the Hightower's carefully crafted wines along with selected cheese pairings. In addition, you will receive a discount on our two estate wines, Murray Red Mountain Syrah and our newly introduced Out of Line Estate Wine.
Featured Wine: Murray Red Mountain Syrah and our newly introduced Out of Line Estate Wine.
Wine Profile:  These two wines are our first 100% estate blends — one being Syrah and the other a Bordeaux Blend, but both well balanced good food wines.

September 4, 2010
Winery of the Week: Wildridge Winery
Featured benefit or activity:  Please visit Wilridge Vineyard and the Tasting Room Yakima over Labor Day weekend for our annual environmental festival.  The weekend features tours of Wilridge's certified organic and biodynamic vineyard on Naches Heights and the dedication of our new 10,000 watt solar panel array.  Lectures will include biodynamic viticulture, renewable energy, and organic wine tasting.
Featured Wine: 2009 Estate Mélange Blanc (white blend), 2009 Estate Red Desert Wine (Port-style), 2008 Red Mountain Mélange (Bordeaux Blend) and 2008 Red Mountain Sangiovese.