Adventures in Lake Chelan

Here at 1000 Corks we’ll do anything for our users. Including exhaustingly visiting the best wine country in the world.

We recently went to Lake Chelan, Washington with a bunch of other wine bloggers. Things started well for us; our first stop was the very cute Rio Vista winery.

The wonderful food I would soon be wearing after I got up in the air.

While at the winery I was given the opportunity to go for a ride in a very unique vintage seaplane. The plane sat five people, and there were five groups. Each group was taken up on a very nice twenty-minute ride to see the lake and surrounding vineyards.

From the moment we started I knew I was in trouble. Luckily, the plane was so loud that no one could her me start to moan as I got more and more motion sick. I tried desperately to remember whether I was better off shutting my eyes, or focusing on a point far away, or something else all together.

Halfway through the ride I was a pile of sweat. I tapped the tour guide on the shoulder and asked her if there was a bag. I was given one, but because it was a self-sealing bag, it was a bit more complex then the simple lined paper bag you find in commercial craft.

So I made the mistake of reading the two sentences of instructions on the bag. Ironically it was this that pushed me over the edge. I suspect if I hadn’t read the instructions nothing that followed would have happened, because reading while moving really makes me nauseous.

I’ll spare you most of the harrowing details, but suffice to say I pretty much filled the bag, and the overflow went on my shirt, pants and camera! Yuck!

After a nap I was back in shape for a lovely dinner at Tsillan Cellars. It’s an absolutely stunning winery. And I got to try Oysters Rockefeller for the first time. The dish was invented in 1899, but to me it seems like something Don Draper would order in a trendy restaurant in Mad Men, so I was happy.

The bright side of having lost my lunch in the seaplane was I had room for two pieces of Tiramisu. Yummy!

The following day we had a very nice brunch at Karma. They are making a Brut de Brut sparkling wine using the same method as Champagne.

We also tried a few other of the regions sparkling wines. My favorite was a very tasty Rose, Hard Row to Hoe's 2011 Good in Bed. It's fantastic and a very lovely color!

Then Jon Staenberg, founder of Hand of God wines and I went off on a trip of our own to see Blue Spirits Distilling.

Blue Spirits Distilling is the most impressive nano-distillery I've ever seen. Located right on the lake among residential houses, the headquarters is absolutely beautiful. And the combination of passion and science the founder brings to his art is amazing.

I got a chance to try their Mango Rum-Vodka, and their Espresso flavored vodka. They were both smoother and brighter then any flavored spirit I've tried before.