The reds and whites are ready — and thanks to winemakers’ creative juices, the scarecrows are diverse this weekend during the Harvest Winery Tour across the North Olympic Peninsula.
The tour from 11 a.m. until 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday comprises nine stops, each with special foods and wines — and a scarecrow of some sort.
At Chimacum’s Finnriver Farm & Cidery for example, Pomona, goddess of the orchard, presides.
And then there’s the friendly figure at Black Diamond Winery south of Port Angeles.
Owner Sharon Adams has turned an old wooden wine press into Cranky, a scarecrow wearing a tablecloth and bearing a basket of apples.
Olympic Cellars, the big barn on U.S. Highway 101 east of Port Angeles, has a shaggy one named Sasquina; she’s a large female Sasquatch.
The winery’s artist in residence, Kristi Knowles, created her to greet this weekend’s wine wanderers.
Tour tickets
Tickets to the Harvest Winery Tour vary from $30 for the whole circuit, commemorative wine glass included, or $5 per tasting at individual wineries and cideries.
Tour passes are on sale at each winery.
And while children are welcome on the tour, one must be 21 or older to purchase tickets and taste wines.
Each tour stop has its own ambience, of course.
At Black Diamond, “it’s rustic and rural,” said Adams, who will be pouring her plum, raspberry and cranberry wines as well as Black Diamond’s syrah, a wine descended from an ancient Iranian grape.
At Olympic Cellars, the crew will be popping truffle popcorn on the patio and, inside the tasting room, offering the holiday Cranberry Jubilee wine and the 2008 merlot and cabernet franc.
Oven Spoonful’s mushroom and local grain soup also will be served.
On the west side of Port Angeles, Harbinger Winery will have live music by acoustic guitarist Gerald Broud from 1 p.m. until 4 p.m. Saturday, and on both days, owner Sara Gagnon and crew will dish up chanterelle stroganoff, salmon croquette and apple crisp to go with the malbec, merlot, chardonnay and riesling.
At Finnriver Farm & Cidery, there will be pizza.
This isn’t your father’s pie; in the new wood-fired oven, “we’re going to be making pizza all weekend: apple-cheddar-spinach with optional bacon,” promised farmer Crystie Kisler.
Visitors with tour tickets will enjoy a free slice, while others may purchase theirs or go for a whole pie for $10.
Kisler and crew also will be pouring Finnriver’s botanically infused ciders, fruit wines and hard ciders, as always.
Also welcoming wine tourists this weekend: Wind Rose Cellars in downtown Sequim, with an Alder Wood Bistro harvest soup and Italian-inspired wines such as the 2009 Bravo Rosso; FairWinds Winery with hot mulled wine and its latest releases; Camaraderie Cellars with the Spanish red-wine tempranillo and lunch from the wood-fired oven; and Eaglemount Wine & Cider with new releases made from apples grown in its own orchard.
Information on the Harvest Winery Tour is also at www.OlympicPeninsulaWineries.org.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
