Pacific Northwest Wining & Dining is billed as a cookbook, but it’s much more than that. It’s also a story about the uniqueness of the Pacific Northwest, its people, its places, its chefs, and its winemakers. Braiden Rex-Johnson (that’s a name you can’t forget) takes you on quite a tour through Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and [...]

When you are winding down and relaxing after dinner on a cold, winter evening, there’s nothing better than a small glass of port wine. Add in a piece of chocolate with your port around the holidays and you have a treat that’s hard to beat.
Port is a fortified wine, meaning that grape spirit (almost 80 [...]

The wine trails guy, Steve Roberts, has done it again, completing his trifecta of Northwest wine guides with this book, WineTrails of Idaho. Earlier this year when I was visiting with Steve about his WineTrails of Oregon book, I asked him what was next and he mentioned this book, so I wasn’t surprised when I [...]

For the second year in a row, Dad (John) and I attended the Rhone Rangers trade/media tasting in Seattle. The Rhone Rangers are a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting American Rhone varietal wines. To be members, wineries must produce wines from one or more of the 22 varietals that are native to the Rhone Valley [...]

During these tough economic times, it’s refreshing to see creative marketing combined with an environmentally friendly concept. And that’s exactly what we found recently when we visited Pend d’Oreille Winery in Sandpoint, Idaho.
We learned that since February, their popular Bistro Rouge Red Table Wine has been available in a refillable 1.5 liter bottle. You buy [...]

As gas prices climb higher and higher and your employer balks at that long-overdue pay raise, have you started looking for wines on sale at reasonable prices? Sure you have, but remember there is a big difference between a cheap wine and a bargain wine.
A wine is only a bargain if it’s a good wine [...]

It all began on April 8th of this year; a road trip through 23 states covering 12,360 miles. Since then, I’ve posted 16 times from the road as we visited almost too many wineries to count in search of that next great bottle. Obviously, I hope that you have read all of my posts from [...]

As we continued our cross-country road trip, we visited three Idaho wineries, one in Glenns Ferry and two in Caldwell, Idaho. They all produce their wines exclusively with Idaho grapes, and we found some pretty good wines at each stop. Our first stop was at Carmela Vineyards, in business since 1988. They produce about 10,000 [...]

This event, held last weekend at the Dempsey Indoor on the University of Washington campus, brought together two of my favorite things, Huskies and wine. As a graduate of the University of Washington, I am a tried and true Husky fan. In fact one of my favorite pastimes is attending UW sporting events with my [...]