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Winery Tours $10/person
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Wine in the Yakima Valley Winery A short video tour of Bonair Winery Spring has sprung early this year thanks to El Niño. Already the orchardists are cranking up their wind machines to warm the orchards at night. We grape growers in the Rattlesnake Hills just pull the covers over our heads, Spring is a good time to visit the Yakima Valley. Rain and clouds cover the we(s)t side while wind sweeps the skies clear in Eastern Washington. Does it bother you that your wine had a better vacation than you? Did you get to Summer in Australia? Live in a wine cellar in Chile? or spend time in Bordeaux? We support the locavore movement. Your food shouldn't travel any more than you. Travel globally, but eat locally. Did you know that only one bottle in six consumed in Washington was produced here. Save the planet. Drink Washington wine. Bonair Winery is situated in the Rattlesnake Hills of the Yakima Valley, Washington State's foremost wine growing region region. No, we don't have rattlesnakes in our vineyards. Every March 17, St. Patrick's Day we drive the snakes out of the vineyards. This is Washington States most scenic wine country. There are no industrial park wineries. (Unlike California, most wineries in Washington State are in cities and their grapes come from hundreds of miles away often blending vineyards that are 100 miles apart.) In the Rattlesnake hills you drive through orchards and vineyards, just like wine country is supposed to be. Like Bonair, our neighbors are Estate Wineries, also. We have a close connection to the soil. The grapes you see make the wines you drink. Most people think Seattle is Washington. Well, politically speaking, it is, but east of the Cascade Range is a vast desert that receives as little as 5 inches annual rainfall. Folks, that's less than Phoenix, Arizona. It is a perfect climate for Vitis Vinifera, the European Wine Grape. We get 17.4 hours of sunshine in the summer, 2 hours more than the fellows down in California. Washington is on the same latitude as the famous wine regions of France. As you can see by the map, California is on a different latitude. In the desert, there is a great differential between daytime and nighttime temperatures, sometimes over 40o. These cool evenings preserve the natural acid in the grapes while daytime temperatures develop sugars. This results in a perfect sugar/acid balance. Without untimely and damaging natural rainfall in the Yakima Valley, we can precisely regulate the amount of water the plants receive to ripen grapes to perfection with the use of drip irrigation. Drip irrigation preserves water, a precious commodity in the desert West. |
For up-to-date pass conditions, check the Washington State Pass Report. We'll see you later this morning! We are only two hours and fifteen minutes via Interstate from Bellevue. We are only 172 miles from Portland Oregon. Have a safe trip. |
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