good till the last drop

This past weekend was one of those that leave you feeling like you need another weekend to recover. There was certainly a pleasant whirlwind of activity.  Saturday's urban wine tour gave me an excuse to start drinking at 2 pm, and I continued to imbibe various forms of alcohol up until 2 am. A good 12 hours of drinking made for a slow start the next morning, but I still managed to cover a lot of ground until Monday evening. I'll save those adventures for next time though - can't fit too much fun into one post!

I've been to a few wineries in the past, including ones in Napa and Tuscany which are obviously more established. The ones we went to in Seattle were much smaller, but I really loved seeing the enthusiasm and passion of the winery owners. It is clearly tough to succeed in this business, but they've taken a risk to pursue something that interests them. I'm continually drawing inspiration from these kinds of stories - the entrepreneurs, the people with the little side projects, the bloggers - anyone who has an idea and has enough passion to follow through with it.

A stop at the Wine Outlet included a food pairing which was quite interesting. For example, we first tried both a red and a white wine alone, then the cherries alone (really sweet), then cherries + white wine (the cherries make the white wine taste much less sweet), then cherries + red wine (great combination). Repeat with salami and smoked blue cheese.

We got somewhat distracted by an adorable dog at the Stomani Cellars... 

We ended the tour at 106 Pine, which is an adorable wine shop/bar by Pike Place. They actually own the chocolate store next door as well, so we finished with a pairing of subtly spicy chocolate + framboise wine. You really can't go wrong with wine & chocolate...

Weekend adventures to be continued...