Trip date: April 2024
I hadn't been to the Cayuse annual release weekend party since before Covid so I was really looking forward to it! I invited a couple of friends from our wine group to join me for the weekend, driving over on Friday afternoon, and we were all surprised to have snow while going over Snoqualmie Pass! In April!
First stop, Yakima for Mexican lunch! We chose Taqueria Rolly's for tacos inside their fun retrofitted school bus. Good stuff!
We rolled into the Marriott in Walla Walla with not a lot of time to get cleaned up for dinner and get back on the road. Our dinner reservations were at 5:30 at Bar Bacetto in Waitsburg which is about a 30 min drive away. 5:30 is not my preferred dinner time but reservations are hard to get here!
Waitsburg is so cute and very, very, quiet!
We had great seats right up at the counter and had to restrain ourselves from just ordering everything as it all sounded, and smelled, so good. In the end we had 4 dishes between 3 of us plus some dessert. I highly recommend Bar Bacatto, even after a long drive over the mountains!
Back in town, I parked the car at the hotel and we walked over to
Passatempo for a couple of cocktails. I've drank here multiple times but still haven't had dinner. Will have to rectify that!
By the time I rsvp'd for my Cayuse party tickets there weren't a lot of time slots left so we ended up going at 10am. And it ended up being a great choice! It gave us time to taste everything and graze through all the small bites provided by one of my favorite Seattle restaurants Lark. And it wasn't crazy busy, or crazy tipsy yet!
When we were in line to enter we actually ran into Chef Sundstrom and he invited us downstairs to check out the catering prep and say hi to everyone. Downstairs was actually in Cayuse's barrel cellar, which was very cool!
We were at the party for a little over an hour and then hit the road for some new-to-me winery tastings. First up was
Devona. It took us a while to find the entrance but we were so glad we did! These wines were just lovely! Winemaker and owner John Abbott makes wines from both Oregon and Washington. We tasted their pinot noir and chardonnays (merlot and cab are poured during the fall release) and I absolutely loved both the pinots. Highly recommend a stop here and you do need to contact them to reserve.
Next up was
Devium, not too far down the road (both of these are in the airport district), and also requires an appointment. Devium had been recommended to us by a few friends so we were excited to try. But as soon as we walked in we were all a bit put off.
As it was Cayuse weekend there were a lot of people in town ready to party, but it seemed that almost everyone at Devium was more that a bit tipsy. And loud! Now that isn't necessarily the winery's fault, except that as we started tasted we realized there were no dump buckets anywhere. And we when asked for one they seemed quite put out. So maybe it was...
But besides the party atmosphere, I honestly just did not like the wines. And winemaker/ owner Keith Johnson would not be surprised by that as he is purposefully making very different styles. Unfiltered and funky; if those words are part of your wine love language than you might be a fan.
Back in town we grabbed delicious burgers from The Ice-Burg and then walked to the downtown area. We had a great time at new-to-me
Time & Direction, the tasting room and the folks working are super fun and the wines were all interesting in a good way!
We all bought a couple of bottles and asked if we could pick them up in the morning, as we were on our way to an early dinner in town and didn't want to be walking around with our wine all night. Turns out they offer delivery depending on where you are staying! Awesome!
It was a short walk over to Brassiere 4 for a lovely bistro dinner capped off with nightcaps before walking back to the hotel.
In the morning we stopped by Bacon & Eggs for breakfast before hitting the road. It's always been delicious in the past but this time all of our dishes were either over salted, luke warm, or both. Not sure if that was a one-off or not.
The required stop at Los Hernandez in Union Gap was made to grab tamales for our freezers. They had nopale which I hadn't tried (theirs) before and they were delicious!
And then we were back in Seattle with a trunk full of wine and tamales :)
All Walla Walla photos
here.
