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My wife and I spent the past weekend in Walla Walla, Washington, for an anniversary trip to check out the booming wine scene they have going on. How booming? Well, they have some 130 wineries in the Walla Walla Valley (an area that also encompasses Milton-Freewater in Oregon), and 85 of those have tasting rooms open to the public.

And, an interesting coincidence: the weekend we were visiting also happened to be the weekend of the Wine Bloggers Conference.

I'm not going to give a blow-by-blow account of all the wineries we visited, but I will highlight at least a few that stood out:

• L'École No. 41 is one of the biggest and oldest wineries in the area and on Friday afternoons (starting at 2:00) they have a special "Honor Roll" tasting for a nominal fee. We got there just in time to not only get an inside tour (with tasting wines from the barrels, even) but to enjoy a vertical tasting of their Perigee line of estate wines. Pretty fantastic.
• Tertulia Cellars was a fun stop not only for the wines but also the lively conversation of the hostess (I don't remember her name).
• Similarly good conversation and wines at Rulo Winery, along with a large platter of artisan cheeses to help ones' self to. We loved their Syrca red wine and I particularly enjoyed their oak-aged Chardonnay—I was most impressed with the side-by-side tasting they did with their stainless steel-aged Chardonnay so you could taste the difference: it was like the kind of beer geekery I'm all over.
• Saviah Cellars was another great source of conversation and information; in addition to getting an interesting impromptu lesson in viticulture, we got the lowdown on some good sources of beer in the area (though we didn't get any) and some inside info on the local wine industry. Oh, and good wines, too.

Friday night we attended the Walla Walla party of the year: the Charles Smith/K Vintners party held in part for the Wine Bloggers Conference. It would sound much cooler to say, "we crashed the party," but in reality we were legitimately on the list so there was no party-crashing involved.

And by "party of the year" I mean just that: apparently Charles Smith is a rock star in Walla Walla, the area's larger-than-life personality who is eccentric, makes incredible wine, and throws the best parties. We had no idea who he was or that the party was a big deal; we almost didn't go until we heard it was going to be the place to be. (And afterward, everyone who heard we were at the party was highly impressed.)

In addition to the free wine tastings, live rock band, and burlesque dancers, the other highlight of the party was meeting fellow beer blogger The Beer Wench (AKA Ashley Routson), who was undercover attending the Wine Bloggers Conference and, well, generally partying, as near as I could tell.

By our count, we ended up visiting 13 wineries, and tasting the wines of several others. That sounds like a lot, but on our first day (and second winery), we met a couple who was on their 20th winery of the day. They were tasting then pouring their wine out, but even so, how they were still standing (much less driving) is a bit of a mystery.

A good weekend, all told. And I may have some more anecdotes from it to post. We'll see.

At my parents' place in Alfalfa, they have a wild plum tree that produced fruit for (I believe) the first time ever this year. They were small, golden fruits that were terrifically sour as they grew, but ripened and turned a deep pink-purple and ended up being rather sweet.

They picked a bunch of the plums, and then picked a bunch more for me (at my request): I ended up with almost four pounds of them, many very ripe! I debated for a bit on what to do with them and decided to make wine.

I found a plum wine recipe online and went with it (the "basic" recipe at the top of the page); for a gallon of wine, it calls for three to four pounds of plums which worked out just right (four for sweet plums, three for wild—I compromised and used all four-ish pounds). The pitting of the plums was the biggest chore, as many were (over)ripe and almost falling apart, and many others were very small. The rest went fairly smoothly: making wine is easy.

That was about a week ago, and I racked it from the bucket to a gallon-size glass jug tonight for secondary fermentation. I'll rack it again in about three weeks, and then again about three months after that. Then, of course, I'll bottle it and (according to this particular recipe) age it for another six to 12 months.

(Making wine is easy—I didn't say it was quick!)

No idea how the final product will turn out, but I did taste the sample I drew for the hydrometer reading: still fizzy with fermentation and a bit yeasty (especially the smell), it was fairly sweet and—if not for the yeastiness—would make a tasty drink right now.

Nothing to do now but shove it away in the the closet and be patient.

A few link-worthy items that caught my eye but that I can't squeeze a full post out of (yet)...

The Real Oregon: a new(ish) blog subtitled "Oregon for the eccentric traveler." Looks promising, with travel tidbits about Oregon that seem pretty interesting to me.

How a $2 bottle transformed the wine industry: Charles Shaw wine (AKA Two (or Three) Buck Chuck) turns five. Who'd'a thunk it? And for the record, I rather like the wines.

Burst Culture: A bit of brilliance from Warren Ellis that's been making the rounds online. Pretty much ties in with ideas I've been having about the web and blogging, and giving me stuff to think about.

Just a quick note about Chelsea Lane, a nice little wine shop that used to be downtown but is now located at the factory outlet stores on south Highway 97: they're closing! I don't know when the last day will be, but right now they're selling their wines at 30% off, and beer for 15% off. I picked up four normally-spendy beers there the other day.

Get down there while the getting's good. It's really too bad they're closing; I don't really know of any other wine shops in Bend (dedicated/exclusive wine shops—not just wineries or places that also sell wine), except maybe for Vino Mercato.