We’re taking a look back at this difficult, dark year, and trying to highlight some of the bright spots. Come along with us and let’s reminisce about fabulous Woodinville and Washington State wineries, tasting rooms, restaurants, wines and people! (Not necessarily in that order!)
January 2020 –
We started off the New Year optimistic, positive, and totally unaware of the very difficult year ahead for all of us on the planet. We did our first wine tasting of the year at Ambassador Winery in the Woodinville warehouse district.
With over 130 wineries and tasting rooms in the Woodinville area, we hadn’t yet visited every one of them. We were making a conscious effort to visit more wineries and not just go to our same favorites all the time. (It’s hard, though, to resist the temptation to go to a favorite winery where the staff are fabulous and you know the wine is excellent!)
Jen had never been to Icon Cellars in Artisan Hill, and invited her friend Zoe to join her for a wine tasting.
Seattle rarely gets much snow in the winter, so when it snowed in early January, we were delighted. We lit bonfires in our yards and drank delicious local Rose wines (such as this one from Cedergreen Cellars) and white wines from Washington State.
Little did we know that we’d be spending much of our wine tasting time this year outside next to bonfires, with restaurants and wineries closed to indoor visitors.
Carrie traveled to Lake Chelan for Lake Chelan Winterfest to cover it for our other blog, Lake Chelan Wine Blog. One of her favorite wineries over there is Hard Row to Hoe Vineyards, and here is their “Shameless Hussy” 2019 rose (long since sold out).
February 2020 –
In February, we were delighted to attend the Walla Walla Wine industry tasting event at McCaw Hall. We tasted incredible Washington wines, and got a little bit of face time with some of our favorite winery folks, including Jennifer Armstrong from Armstrong Family Winery.
Carrie threw an outdoor wine tasting party on a rainy day, improvising a way to keep the food and wine dry using her plastic outdoor greenhouse gazebo. Little did we suspect that months later we’d be huddling in similar gazebos and igloos at restaurants and tasting rooms!
It being winter, we spent a lot of time indoors at wineries, revisiting our clubs (DeLille and Maryhill for Jen, Alexandria Nicole Cellars and Sparkman Cellars for Carrie) and getting sneak peeks (such as when Adrice wines moved to their snazzy new tasting room).
March 2020 –
In retrospect, we really should not have attended the Cabernet Classic in early March. (Here’s Jen on the left, Carrie in the middle and Shona from Wine Diva Lifestyle on the right). We’d heard about the novel coronavirus at this point, but it didn’t seem to be too close to home yet. A man even coughed on Carrie (he rudely didn’t try to cover his cough) and we consider ourselves very fortunate that we did not catch coronavirus at this large gathering of people.
In early to mid March, we decided we were young enough and healthy enough to support local restaurants. We ate indoors at Vivi Pizzeria, The Commons, Purple Cafe, Heritage, Hollywood Tavern and Village Wines, all of which were sanitizing, cleaning and being extra cautious. As days passed and we read more and more disturbing news reports about the realities of the coming global pandemic, we became less willing to risk eating in indoor restaurants, so we ordered takeout as much as possible.
Then Washington State ordered a series of shutdowns, closures, stay-at-home orders, etcetera, and our local restaurants and wineries began finding ways to pivot and stay afloat. They began developing online ordering systems, pickup/curbside takeout, delivery options, etc. in a frantic rush to keep their employees employed. Jen wrote a great and well-researched article on how to order food and wine from Woodinville restaurants and wineries. She spent lots of time on the phone calling wineries and checking to be sure her info was accurate.
We became very concerned about our local restaurant and tasting room employees, many of who had their hours cut or were laid off altogether. Knowing that many of them might face a long wait and/or a difficult time signing up for benefits, we wanted to do something to get food on their tables quickly. Carrie had recently had quite a bit of experience helping run a food pantry in Kirkland, and we decided to open one for local Woodinville and Bothell area restaurant and winery employees.
After a few days of phone calls and networking with helpful “connector” type people including Kimberly Ellertson at the Woodinville Chamber, the fabulous Kim Schoch, and Lauren at Eye of the Needle Winery, we were able to secure use of a warehouse space thanks to the generosity of Chef Anne Marie. We solicited in-kind canned food donations from generous local winemakers and industry friends, and were able to stock the shelves and open the Woodinville Wine Industry food pantry on March 20, 2020.
April 2020 –
And we stayed home.
We cooked, we baked, we cleaned, we read, we wrote, we supervised our kids’ schooling, we took walks, and did self care.
We drank lots, and lots, and lots of wine and alcohol, and like most of you, we binged on Netflix and caught up on books and TV shows we’d been too busy during “the time before” to enjoy.
We figured out ways to keep in touch with our friends via careful backyard outdoor social distancing and then later, via video chats and video happy hours. We hosted online events, consulted wineries on hosting their virtual tastings, and helped people find interesting wine videos to watch and participate in. We encouraged people to find ways to support local restaurants and wineries, using takeout, ordering wine online, picking up wine from curbside at wineries, and by buying gift certificates to use in the future.
May 2020 –
We’d celebrated Easter at home, then Cinco de Mayo. We hosted tiny two or three person social gatherings in our backyards, grateful for the good weather and sunshine. We dipped into our cellars, treating ourselves to opening fabulous local wines we might have saved for future days. Tired of our own cooking already, we picked up wine and food from curbsides, ordering family meals from local chefs.
We volunteered at EastWest Food Rescue, helping bag rescued potatoes at Farmer Frog in Woodinville. Vivi Pizzeria and Tandem Food Truck partnered with us to bring food to the hungry hard working volunteers helping bag and move tens of thousands of pounds of food for hungry Western Washington families.
Cabin fever set in, and we decided to put ourselves into a bubble and head to Lake Chelan (which had initially asked tourists and second homeowners to stay home, then relented and allowed visitors to the town again). We self quarantined, closed the food pantry for a few days, and took separate cars to our beautiful rental house at The Lookout in Chelan. We brought all our food and wine with us, not wanting to put local townsfolk at risk from our potential big-city germs. Though we couldn’t go to any stores, restaurants or wineries during our visit, we enjoyed the beautiful view from our porch and the long walks we took down to the lake and back. We felt restored and refreshed, and returned to our homes in the Seattle area ready to continue our volunteering, care for our families, and get back to blogging about the Woodinville wine scene.
June 2020 –
We normally throw a big National Rose Day party for our local wine industry friends. This year, of course, we had to have a much smaller celebration. We invited just a few friends over to Carrie’s backyard to partake in Rose wine. We did our best to drink it all up, but Carrie ended up with around 80 bottles of unopened Rose from local Woodinville wineries. She gifted bottles as often as possible, saving four or five Rose bottles for her Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations.
This year our National Rose Day party was also held online, with a couple of Rose-themed happy hours, a virtual Rose tasting and a couple of videos talking about our favorite Rose wines from Washington.
Suddenly restaurants and wineries were re-opened and the stay-at-home orders were lifted or modified (though that would of course change in the months to come as the pandemic worsened). We were delighted to run around town investigating, letting our visitors know which tasting rooms were open again, and seeing our friends happily enjoying the outdoors, sunshine, and convivial vibe.
We watched wineries figure out how to hold extremely limited wine releases, using time-consuming sanitation procedures and social distancing. It’s been difficult watching our friends and compatriots struggling during this difficult time. We encourage patience, respect, empathy, sympathy and keeping a positive attitude.
See our upcoming post on our 2020 Washington wine adventures, part 2, coming soon!
Join our Woodinville Wine Chat group on Facebook if you’d like!
-Carrie and Jen
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