By Guest Blogger: Sean Sullivan

As many of my friends know, my favorite game after a day of wine tasting is to go, person by person, through a series of questions about what stood out. For me, talking about wine is a big part of the fun. The questions inevitably go like this – What was the wine of the weekend? What was the winery of the weekend? What was the most exciting new winery we visited? What was the biggest disappointment?

For 2010 Walla Walla Fall Release Weekend, I have shared below my answers to these and other questions. If you attended Fall Release, feel free to join in the fun and post your thoughts to these questions or other things that stood out during your visit. If you missed Fall Release, Holiday Barrel Tasting is right around the corner on December 5^th and 6^th.

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OK, it’s our little secret. When asked what Walla Walla wines we drink, many of us respond with some of the best names in this valley: Leonetti, Spring Valley, Cayuse or Pepper Bridge.  However, when asked specifically what wine we opened tonight, we will give up our current favorite go-to-Walla Walla wine.

It is the bottle you grab when only you want a glass of wine with dinner.  Or when you just can’t bring yourself to open a more expensive wine when eating lasagna, pizza or hamburgers.  So when you find a great weekday wine, it is a treasure!

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By Guest Blogger: Denise Slattery

Tasting wine around the airport in Walla Walla is an excellent way to spend a wine- tasting day.  Once referred to as the “wine ghetto of Walla Walla” by Esquire Magazine (not sure this is a compliment or not!) it certainly does offer delicious treasures for even the most serious of wine collectors.  With over 18 wineries open on a regular basis, you’ll easily discover something wonderful to drink for dinner or a fabulous bottle to stash in the cellar.

Port of Walla Walla Wine Incubators

Up on Piper Ave., the Winery Incubators are a ‘must-see’ and, if you have not yet visited this destination, put the incubators on your wine tasting itinerary this fall.   Five start-up wineries in nearly identical buildings are nestled together in one place, each offering something different in their style and varietals.  Cavu Cellars, Adamant Cellars, Lodmell Cellars, Trio Vintners and Kontos Cellars make up the village and between them have dozens of wines on hand to sample. Stop by on any given day and you’ll most likely be greeted by the winemaker, or be able to spy the work he or she does.  Like many of the wineries at the airport, all the winemaking’s done right there, within full view of the tasting rooms.

Be aware, however, that ‘start-up’ does not necessarily mean ‘new’. The truth is that none of these folks are new to winemaking – just the commercial businesses are. In order to lease a space at the incubators the winery must be brand new.  At the end of the 6 year lease the winery must move out and make way for a new ‘baby winery’. The bare bones buildings allow the winemakers to fashion their own styles in a professional atmosphere and grow their brands.   The resulting quality of wine made here is certainly on par with what you would expect from the wines of the region; excellent wines produced from quality fruit grown in the region and made with great care and passion.

Denise Slattery is one of the trio of winemakers and owners of Trio Vintners in Walla Walla, Wa.

It started this summer when Dusted Valley and Gifford Hirlinger opened their doors in Woodinville. However, even though they were the first Walla Walla wineries to set up a satellite tasting room in Western Washington, other E. Washington wineries were already there and setting the example.  Now, almost every winery of a certain size seems to be contemplating a second tasting room in this suburb of both Seattle and Bellevue.

However, it still came as a shock when we heard last week that Pepper Bridge and sister winery, Amavi would open a tasting room near the Hollywood School House. The venerable Pepper Bridge winery and vineyard by the same name has become synonymous with Walla Walla and its rarefied status as one of the premier wineries in our AVA.

The rationale is simple; a retail presence in Woodinville is the easiest way to reach the west-side population of wine consumers and introduce them to your brand. This is especially important for those labels who beefed up their wine production during the heady years of 2007 & 2008 and before the party stopped when the economy slowed down.

Fast forward to 2009. While an Eastern Washington tasting room may see anywhere from 5000 – 50,000 visitors a year (depending on brand awareness and location), wineries in Woodinville are able to tap into the many national and international visitors visiting Seattle each year. Upwards of 300, 000 visitors make Chateau Ste. Michelle a destination each year, according to a brochure obtained during a tour and tasting visit there several years ago.

What does this mean for Walla Walla? Probably not much. While our attraction as a premier wine destination may be grounded first in our wineries; it is also in our bucolic surroundings, our stunning Blue Mountain vistas, our agricultural heritage (of which grapes are the most recent crop), and our vibrant, renewed downtown.  In a sentence, our authentic wine country lifestyle.  For those of us who live here, we know it’s the real thing.

It remains to be seen if visiting a tasting room with a view of the sluggish slough or alongside a busy commuter road satisfies a wine consumer’s desire to touch the dirt that grows the grapes or if those wine visitors will accept an urban tasting room standing in as a facsimile of our wine country lifestyle.

By Guest Blogger:  Catie McIntyre Walker

The Fall Release Weekend is just around the corner and whether you are sage and savvy when it comes to wine weekends or perhaps a newbie, here are a few tips and reminders to help you make the most of your weekend.  First of all and most important: we are assuming that you already have your room reserved along with a few restaurant reservations, because blue tarp camping and staring pitiful at diners with reservations, while drooling on restaurant windows is never attractive.

So how will you survive such a busy weekend? My first suggestion is to head into Walla Walla with the mind set you are here to relax, learn a lot and have a great time.  Also, before you head out the door, take the time to print off a copy of the Walla Walla Wine News Fall Release Guide. This list will assist you in what to expect from the wineries regarding their new releases, activities and their hours for public tastings.  Need a map to the wineries?  Contact the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance for their brochure or catch it online. You can also locate brochures at many of the wineries.

Now, that you have made your list of wineries to visit and checked it twice.  Here is where tourists and wineries are going to find out who’s naughty or nice.  My best advice is to relax. R-E-L-A-X and have a great time.  Be courteous and put your cell phone on voice mail, especially when you are in the wineries.  Are you really that important and if you are, perhaps your Secret Service or Royalty Protection people can answer your calls.

The mornings of wine tasting, walk away from the granola nibbles and enjoy a hearty breakfast. Oh yeah baby, it’s your excuse for biscuits and gravy!  Load up on carbs and proteins and hydrate-hydrate-hydrate! Hydrate with H2O all day! Don’t forget to take the time through the day to have a nosh here and there. Many of the wineries will be serving complimentary appetizers and offering food for purchase throughout the day.

Pace yourself from winery to winery and learn how to spit! It’s the only time momma would approve of you spitting in public.  Take notes of the wines you tasted and don’t be afraid to ask questions, especially if you are a wine newbie.  It’s important to keep an open mind to wines you have previously ignored or did not like, while remembering one winemaker’s chardonnay and vintage may not taste like another.  And while you are keeping an open mind, don’t be all locked into tasting only wines that have received 90-something points and above.  You never know when you may find an affordable treasure that will later be discovered and giving you the advantage of boasting to your wine peers, “I remember them when…”

Keep a realistic goal of how many wineries to visit in one day. The point of these events is to “taste” the wine and learn about the fruit of the area and the winemaker’s style. It’s always a good idea to have a designated driver, but having a designated driver doesn’t mean you have to deaden your taste buds. By the sixth winery visit, your taste buds will become fatigued and fuzzy. So the 25th wine you tasted in one day may taste very different the next time you taste it on a fresh palate.  And the most important reason for not tasting through every wine in the Walla Walla Valley?

We want you to have another reason to come back and visit us!

Catie McIntyre Walker is the original Walla Walla wine blogger at Walla Walla Grape Vine. After eight years of cleaning spit buckets and pouring for the masses in local tasting rooms, Catie hung up her cork screw to pursue her writing and open her online wine store, Walla Walla Wine Woman. Catie also writes a wine column for Walla Walla Union Bulletin’s magazine, “Lifestyles”, blogs for Tourism Walla Walla and is a contributor to Palate Press and Washington Tasting Room magazines.

Traditionally, the first full weekend in November has been the only time Cayuse Vineyards opens their winery doors to their allocation list.  Now, many Walla Walla wineries use this weekend to officially celebrate the end of harvest and release their newest wines.

We have compiled our list of winery hours, new releases and special events in a take-along PDF. Use this as your guide to this year’s Fall Release Weekend. Many wineries have special events including winemaker dinners, art exhibits, food offerings, etc.

As a preview to Fall Release, we will be posting a new blog everyday this week and will be featuring guest bloggers including a ‘Walla Walla Fall Release Survival Guide’ from the famed Wild Walla Walla Wine Woman, Catie McIntyre Walker.

Don’t miss guest blogger and winemaker Denise Slattery of Trio Vintners as she details airport winery happenings and her picks on what not to miss.

Be sure to check back every day as we add events  and new blogs.

Reminder:  If you are coming to Fall Release in Walla Walla, you will have already made your lodging arrangements, but don’t wait to plan where you will be eating. Our restaurants will be very busy this coming weekend, so call early to make sure you have dinner reservations.

We look forward to seeing you here in Walla Walla. Even if you can’t make it to Fall Release, be sure to follow us on Twitter (@wwwinenews) as we tweet all through the weekend.