Horse Heaven Hills Trail Ride
Our pre-event evening reception introduced prospective club members to several excellent club wines, and gave us a chance to become acquainted. The tour bus took us through many miles of unbroken vistas of native grassland. Then in irrigated wine country, we visited: Columbia Crest, Water From Wine (a non-profit supporting clean water), Canoe Ridge, Alexandria Nicole Destiny Ridge, and Coyote Canyon, ending with a barbecue at Crow Butte Park. The scale of the Horse Heaven Hills winemaking industry is truly stunning: Columbia Crest has 22 acres of underground winemaking operations. Horse Heaven Hills AVA produces 20% of all Washington grapes. Automated harvesting technology with machine vision is coming into use. The vineyard owners are a community, helping one another. Don and Linda Mercer, pioneers of the Horse Heaven Hills wine industry, shared their story: When the Columbia River dams were in the planning phase, Don’s father suggested the three boys think about opportunities. Potatoes and beans were at the top of the list, with 30,000 acres, and they also planted a few acres of grapes. To their surprise, the world showed a lot of interest in the wine grapes, and none in the potatoes. We all thoroughly enjoyed the entire event, which was flawlessly planned and executed by Laraine Volpe.