Today, FIUTS led a bunch of intrepid explorers across the Great Lake to a little rural enclave, known as Woodinville. This is but a photolog of the events that unfolded.
Chateau St-Michele - the Winery
The very pretty facade of the Winery. It had a fakey French name although it was run and started by locals, which Matt (the senior who very kindly drove us there. But having been in urban state forever, this was a nice change. :)
Now, I'm not judging or drawing conclusions, BUT... Well, there are 2 groups... And a clear difference as to the composition of them. I leave you to conclude.
Pwetty Chwistmas twee! :) I like.
The bottling setup. We had a pretty nice walkthrough, but it being Sunday, most stuff wasn't up and running.
The tour guide (shit, forgot her name) introducing us to the Washington winery map - apparently WA is a nice place to grow grapes as it's on the 46th parallel - the same latitude (or is it longtitude?) as Bordeaux and Burgundy.
The fermenting / processing vats. The area was fcold (or is that fold?) as they were slowing down the yeast such that it would ferment slowly.
The oak barrels that held wine - this was a literal warehouse full of the stuff. Amazing.
A random cage I found and decided to take a picture with. I didn't get as good a shot as I wanted - but I got a laugh from the cute French/Spanish/Russian/European girl which was rewarding enough. :p BUT, I never got more than that from her. :p
The gift shop.
ME AND MAH MAIN MAN THE... Er. Wine gnome. It was just cute, sitting there.
The random peacock that turned up from nowhere.
All in all, the winery tour was nice, especially when we were taught how to taste wine. The steps are... Simple 'nuff: Check the clarity and colour; sniff; aerate (swirling to add air); sniff again with mouth slightly open; sip. :) Enjoy! It was less informative than one might expect (me thinking back to my trip to the Gardenia factory, for instance) but it was fun tasting wine and hanging out.
Red Hook Brewery
This was just across the street - apparently Woodinville is chockful with breweries and wineries, at least 30 of them within the small area. Pretty cool.
We had lunch there, and friendly conversation around the table ensued. We were (as one might expect) pan-Asian: 1 Singaporean 1 Thai 2 Taiwanese 2 Japanese 2 Korean. Pretty nice as we talked about our experiences and the like.
The tour itself was a mite strange - we were ushered into this small room, each given a small glass (wider than a shot glass) and told our programme: 1 beer, history of Brewery; 1 beer, brewing process; 1 beer, fermentation; 1 beer, bottling; last beer, end of tour. And all this occurred in the small room we were in, never going very far and exploring the brewery, quite bloody amusing.
I like Winterhook! Though no one agreed on which of the 5 different ones they liked the most. :)
Brewing Vats - through a glass pane from the aforementioned room. :)
In the adjoining room, a view of the fermentation vats. Again, cold as heck.
Bottling Process - it was pretty cool to watch the bottles going about. We were in luck apparently, bottling was usually just Monday and Tuesday but they had an extra batch to send out, so we were in luck. :)
Piyawat, my Thai friend who's a LLM and is working at Baker & McKenzie Bangkok.
From left to right:
Lulu, Taiwanese; Betty, Taiwanese; Nobuko (and for those wondering - a different Nobuko. What are the chances?), Japan; Drunk boy; Akane, Japan who can HOLD her liquor - I was impressed. She makes Pet look like me. :p
So all in all, it was a pretty fun way to spend the day. :) Capped perfectly with my ice wine, and the Texans winning. :) It was a good Sunday - now to pack for Toronto. :D Yes, this Thanksgiving is shaping to be a very nice one. :)
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