Friday, April 25, 2008

If You're Ever Passing Thru Goldendale, Washington...

Since the barrel tasting does not start until today (Friday), yesterday we headed south from Yakima to the Goldendale area to check out some wineries. South of Goldendale (small farming town, about 4,000 population) on the Columbia river is where a lot of new wineries are clustered. The most breathtaking views in the world - I may be a little prejudiced because my Grandparents had a ranch on the Columbia until the government took it over for the Hanford Nuclear plant, so I get very nostalgic when I'm in that area, it's so wild, and huge and craggy and beautiful!

Finally got to Maryhill Winery - we've loved their wines for a few years now. I was surprised to find they only started the winery about 7-8 years ago, so guess we found them early on. Their Zins and Syrahs are just wonderful.
http://www.maryhillwinery.com/ourwine.asp

They are building an amphitheater to be finished in a month or so and Cosby, Stills & Nash are the first venue slated - would love to come back for that. The theater has its back to the river and the seating and winery itself faces the river...oh my, the view. (can you tell I'm impressed?)

We spent so much time at Maryhill and tried so many wines, we only hit one more, Marshall winery - a dinky little place just getting on its legs. But, oh the winemaker does know what he's doing. His Syrahs are wonderful. Even if we could have tasted more and still made it home without a drunk driving charge, we spent so much time at each place, we then headed home.

But we made a little detour when we got back to Goldendale - ran across a little house with the sign, The Glass Onion out front. So, in we pulled and found a little gem of a restaurant and gallery in the midst of nothing!!
http://theglassonionrestaurant.com/

Check out their website just to see how the restaurant came to be and also the photographs that Chef Mark McGowan's wife takes.We each had a bowl of his Spring Pea soup with fresh cream and oh my, it was just delicious. On the menu also, was a spinach salad with bleu cheese, bacon, candied pecans and maple dressing! that caught my eye. I handed our server my ACF card (opens so many doors ) and asked if I might just try a little of the maple dressing and out came a little salad for us to try with the dressing. It was just delicious - the salty bleu and the sweetness of the syrup and crunch of fresh spinach and the nuts. AND, Chef Mark was nice enough to give me the recipe and I will be nice enough to share it with you, too.

Chef McGown's Maple Dressing
He uses it with his spinach salad (including bleu cheese, bacon, candied pecans)

1/2 cup maple syrup
2 T. Dijon
1/2 c. cider vinegar
1 1/2 c. olive oil
salt & pepper
1/4 c. brown sugar

With our soup and salad, we had a glass of Cascade Cliff's (a winery we wanted to visit, but alas, didn't think we ought to!) Merlot and it was very good with the salad and dressing, not to mention the soup also.So, that was our day yesterday and what a nice day it was!!

Today, we start drinking (or tasting...) our way thru the Yakima Valley Barrel tasting. So many wines, so little time!

With all the great wines we tried, we almost held to our winery pledge of buying only one bottle per winery on these kinds of trips... almost, had to buy a bottle of Maryhill's Malbec for my birthday dinner coming up... we were rather proud of our restraint!