Road Trip to Yakima
It was an impromptu idea and we jumped on it. By 5:00 Friday night, Ron and I were on I-90 heading to Yakima. I had an open house on Sunday so our plan was to wine taste Saturday and drive back Sunday morning.
It was a beautiful drive over and we reached our hotel at 7ish and hit downtown Yakima immediately after checking in. There are a few tasting rooms down town now so we did pop into a couple of those but mostly wandered the historic area. Part of downtown’s main street was closed down as they were setting up for a 3×3 basketball tournament which made it really easy to wander back and forth checking out the various shops and restaurants. Needless to say…. Downtown was pretty quiet.
I saw one interesting building/sign called the Barrel House (www.thebarrelhouse.net) on N. First St. and figured it was either a furniture store or some type of wine venue so we wandered over and discovered a lovely bar & restaurant. The menu was excellent and it was very hard to decide on what to have. We settled for sharing a braised pork shank with creole risotto. YUM. We could not believe how tasty it was and were mortified when it was gone. The owner/chef Tim Schroeder wandered out and we had to do a few bows to him. I highly recommend the Barrel House for dinner!!! Next time we go we will eat there again.
Pork Shank w/ creole Risotto from the Barrel House
Saturday morning we drove to Prosser and had breakfast at the Red Barn before hitting the wine tasting. Given past experiences we knew we could only handle so many tastings in a day (we even share) so we tried to break it up with a few in Prosser, several in Zillah, hit the casino, few more in Zillah and then Sagelands further up towards the hotel. It was a beautiful day, not too hot although the car did get a bit heated so we bought a cooler at a flea market to keep the wine from cooking in the car. (Note to self: bring cooler for wine).
I had never been to Bonair winery but it was apparently listed in “Washington’s Best Places to Kiss” so we had to check it out. I personally disagree with the listing. The winery is very nice and we did enjoy the wines and a snack but Hyatt smokes them for ambiance.
A beautiful glass door on a shop in Yakima
We had dinner at Santiago’s Gourmet Mexican Restaurant in Yakima (www.santiagos.org) and given the nice warm day, lots of little sips of wine all day…we were done. Had a pleasant drive back Sunday morning, caught up a bit and did an open house. This was a great, quick road trip that we will do again, maybe even this fall. Afterall, we need to have 6 more wineries stamp our passports so we can turn it in and be invited to the wine dinner next year!
written by: Kerri Sheehan - Realtor, Keller Williams GRSE
