Officially Unveiled: The Taste My Vacation Line Up!

At long last, I am officially having my "Taste My Vacation" wine tasting next Saturday, thank you Shani and Karen for offering your deck!  And since this is so long in the making, I've decided to officially announce the line up a few days early.  Now you might be thinking, "what's the big deal?" or "What in the world are you talking about?"  Well, let me outline this event for you.  As you may have read, I took a bit of a wine vacation earlier this summer, and spent 10 days driving across country, visiting wineries and all sorts of tourist traps, and when I returned I thought, wouldn't that make a great theme for a wine tasting?  Since I brought back wine from Missouri to Walla Walla, and points in between, it would be like vacationing though the magic of wine.

So I've selected seven bottles of wine that I brought back with me, and rather than think through this in terms of order and what not, we are simply going to taste these wines in the order I tasted them on the trip!  And don't worry wine blog friends, I'll be posting tasting notes for each of these over the coming weeks.  So, without further adieu, here are the seven wines we will be tasting:

1. Les Bourgeois Vineyards Jeunette Rouge, a red blend from Rochefort, Missouri that is made with the Norton grape, one of the only wine grapes native to North America.
2. 2005 Carmela Cabernet Merlot, a blend of 50/50 Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, this wine from Glenns Ferry, Idaho was the second wine I tried on the trip from the Snake River Valley.  The climate is similar to the Columbia Valley in Washington in terms of length of daylight and temperature, but the volcanic soils tend to make these wines a bit more earthy.
3. 2009 Seven Hills Ciel du Cheval, a wonderful Bordeaux style blend of Merlot (39%), Cabernet Sauvignon (35%), Petit Verdot (15%) and Cabernet Franc (11%), from my first winery stop in Walla Walla.
4. 2008 Forgeron Sagemoor Vineyard Barbera, from my second stop in Walla Walla, I really came to like these wines, great quality and solid values.
5. 2004 L'Ecole No. 41 Ferguson Commemorative Reserve, made in honor of the founders, Baker and Jean Ferguson, this is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon (48%), Merlot (42%), Cabernet Franc (5%) and Petit Verdot (5%).  L'Ecole was the third stop on my tour of Walla Walla!
6. 2008 Reininger Mr. Owl's Red, this was from my last stop in Walla Walla, and this was a blend dedicated to Raul, who became Reininger's cellar master, but when the owners' children were young, they had difficulty pronouncing Raul, and it came out Mr. Owl, thus a blend was born!  This vintage is a blend of Merlot (88%), Syrah (7%) and Sangiovese (5%).
7. Yellowstone Roadblock Red, this one I bought in the gift shop at Yellowstone since earlier in the day I was stopped by a roadblock of a herd of bison coming back into the park, and the label on this bottle has a pickup truck being blocked by bison!  This red blend of organic grapes was made by Ten Spoon Vineyard in Missoula, Montana, my last wine of the trip!

So there you have it, the magnificent seven wines that we'll be tasting next week and sharing through the month of October with my faithful blog readers, giddy up!