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Winery Tours $10/person
Follow the family at their websites
Joseph Puryear
Ben Summit |
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Wine in the Yakima Valley Winery (A short video tour of Bonair Winery
Bungs
Birthday Bash Late summer and fall is the most popular time to visit the Yakima Valley wine country. The hottest weather occurs the last weekend in July and things moderate quite rapidly from there to warm sunny days and cool nights - just what makes the Rattlesnake Hills the best wine country in the state. In the fall, those nasty breezes have died down and the sky takes on a translucence that is ethereal. If you are planning a trip to visit Washington wine country, you will find it very different from California wine country. Most of the Washington wineries are located in industrial parks, strip malls, downtown store fronts, and old airports. Even if a winery is an estate winery, the tasting room may be located miles from the vineyards. If you are planning a trip from Seattle to visit Red Mountain, Tri-Cities, or Walla Walla wineries, you drive right past our winery on I-82, only 2 1/2 hours out of Seattle. Stop in and see us. You walk through our vineyards to get to our tasting room. The grapes you see make the wines you drink. Bonair Winery is situated in the Rattlesnake Hills of the Yakima Valley, Washington State's foremost wine growing region region. No, we don't have rattlesnakes in our vineyards. Every March 17, St. Patrick's Day, we drive the snakes out of the vineyards. This is Washington States most scenic wine country. In the Rattlesnake hills you drive through orchards and vineyards, just like wine country is supposed to be. Like Bonair, our neighbors are Estate Wineries, also. We have a close connection to the soil. In the desert, there is a great differential between daytime and nighttime temperatures, sometimes over 40o. These cool evenings preserve the natural acid in the grapes while daytime temperatures develop sugars. This results in a perfect sugar/acid balance. Without untimely and damaging natural rainfall in the Yakima Valley, we can precisely regulate the amount of water the plants receive to ripen grapes to perfection with the use of drip irrigation. Drip irrigation preserves water, a precious commodity in the desert West. Does it bother you that your wine had a better vacation than you? Did you get to Summer in Australia? Live in a bodega in Chile? or spend time in Bordeaux? We support the locavore movement. Your food shouldn't travel any more than you. Travel globally, but eat locally. Did you know that only one bottle in six consumed in Washington was produced here. Save the planet. Drink Washington wine. Most people think Seattle is Washington. Well, politically speaking, it is, but east of the Cascade Range is a vast desert that receives as little as 5 inches annual rainfall. That's less than Phoenix, Arizona. It is a perfect climate for Vitis Vinifera, the European Wine Grape. We get 17.4 hours of sunshine in the summer, 2 hours more than the fellows down in California. Washington is on the same latitude as the famous wine regions of France. As you can see by the map, California is on a different latitude. |
For up-to-date pass conditions, check the Washington State Pass Report. We'll see you later this morning! We are only two hours and fifteen minutes via Interstate from Bellevue. We are only 172 miles from Portland Oregon. Have a safe trip.
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