We’re still recovering from our food and wine coma, having attended Taste Washington over the weekend.  We’ve been several times before, as Christina worked with a wine association and used to help host media events during the show.  But this time we were attending in the media capacity to taste and review.

As food and wine experiences go, we knew the wines would be solid, but what really blew us away was the quality of the food offerings.  The participating restaurants really brought their “A game”, making the event more than worth the price of admission.  There was an oyster bar, tuna and beef nibbles at every turn, amazing cheeses and killer food trucks.  We reviewed more than 60 wines, which is a feat, when you consider the time needed to take notes on each wine, as well as to say hello to good friends and try to ferret out new discoveries (and to eat, did we mention the great food??).

People often refer to the Washington Wine scene as being in its adolescent stage of growth.  We have certainly seen the wines and the infrastructure grow in leaps and bounds over the last decade.  We continue to be impressed with the quality of the wines and the passion of the winemakers in this region and we are relieved to see that the pricing is still reasonable.  It was interesting to note that we also met several folks from California that had decided to “move on up” to Washington to try their hand making juice in the Wild West.

Over the course of the next month or so, we’ll highlight some fun new finds and tell you what to expect from our perennial favorites with their latest releases.  Next year, don’t take our word for it, come out and enjoy the event for yourself.  As Steve Warner, the President of the Washington Wine Commission said, the goal is to make it truly a Taste of Washington.  We’d say they more than succeeded!