On our recent trip to Washington, Clive mentioned that he had been to Portteus before, and since we were in the Yakima area, Josh, Rick, Clive and myself made the drive down to Zillah, Washington to visit Portteus Winery. We had a window of about 2 hours, and we were all confident we could get to Portteus, do a tasting, and make it back within that time.
Not long
Everything around looked familiar, but we were in orchards in the middle of February, with not many buildings around - hence everything looked the same - so none of us really thought we might be lost. Just in case we might be lost, Rick and I pulled out our trusty pieces of technology that should work in these situations. No, not a GPS, but rather he with his iPhone and I with my BlackBerry attempted to find out where the heck we were and how far we were from Portteus. We were men on a mission damnit, and that mission was to find this place and try the wines. We made left turns and right turns and u-turns, after getting to a couple of dead ends - looking for signs.
Then Clive's phone rang, it was Gwynne, she was running early and was about to get into Yakima. Clive informed her that we were near the winery and he had left her name with the hotel so she could check into his room. A few moments later, Josh's gas light came on. He reassured us that it just mean he had less than 50 miles before he would have run out of gas. Then, when almost all hope was lost, we saw a directional sign. And after passing a couple of roads we had previously been on, we found our way to Portteus Winery.
We saw the warehouse and the house with a Spanish Tile roof across the driveway. The sign on the warehouse read "If door is locked, please ring bell." The bell was rang and a couple seconds later, Brian (at least I think that was his name. I am going to say that it is, and I apologize in advance to him if that is incorrect), the son of the owner, to let us and another pair of gentlemen who had arrived in to do some tasting.
Over the course of roughly 45 minutes, we tried about seven different wines, ranging from Zinfandel to Port to Petite Syrah, to various blends. During the tasting there was entertaining banter that occurred between all of us. Brian jokingly talked about his friends inviting him to things, but only if he brings wine with him. Clive also discovered that Portteus put out a game he and Gwynne recently found - I don't recall anything about the game - and he talked a bit about his frustrations with figuring it all out. Brian cleverly mentioned that it was all in the directions.
We all found and left the winery with something that we liked. We made it back to Yakima in a timely manner, after getting gas, and realized how just one wrong turn was what left us wandering around outside of Zillah.
The wine I choose was the 2008 Rattlesnake Red. As per the bottle, this is a blend made up of 48% Cab Sauv, 25% Zin, 17% Sangiovese, and 10% Merlot.
I decided that this bottle of wine would be the first wine that I would consume as I beg
I would be interested to read how Clive, Josh, and Rick liked their wines from Portteus, while I am sure you all would be interested as well.
As a side note, please know this is not a post that picks on Clive's directional attributes, it just happened to be part of the story :-)
Until next time...
Haven't cracked mine open yet...
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