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Watermill Winery's Wine Breakfast

Ever started the day with wine for breakfast?

That's what happened at Watermill Winery, located near a town called Milton-Freewater in the Walla Walla Valley. 

Here is the breakfast menu. The guests were visiting wine writers on a Cross-Border AVA Tour to see how closely Washington and Oregon are linked in vineyards and wine production. The Walla Walla Valley, for example, extends into each state, and Milton-Freewater is in Oregon.  

Why are rocks on the table? Because Watermill makes wines with grapes from The Rocks District, a small AVA in Oregon renowned for quality. The main grapes are Syrah, Cabernet Sauvignon and Grenache.  

This vineyard shows how the AVA got its name.

All Watermill Winery's Rocks District wines are labeled Hallowed Stones as a tribute to this extraordinary AVA.

Here is a glass of Watermill Syrah and a Rocks rock on my notebook. 

Watermill is home also to Blue Mill Cider Company, which produces fresh-pressed cider from estate-grown fruit. The winery is housed at the bottom of this building and the cidery at the top. 

Breakfast started with three wines including a spritzy, slightly sweet Rosé. This was a 2018 Cabernet Franc Rosé made by students at College Cellars, a teaching winery at Walla Walla Community College's Center for Enology and Viticulture.

Watermill finished and bottled the wine, which is being sold to raise funds for the program. 

Other wines included this Syrah, with a fun label. 

Here, winemaker Andrew Brown holds the 2014 Tempranillo.

Watermill Winery makes wines from vineyards outside the Rocks District too. Here, commercial director Alex Hedges leads a tour of one of them. 

Cabernet Sauvignon from the Anne Marie Vineyard is "the best showcase of a Bordeaux variety we can make," Hedges said. Just 100 cases are produced each year.

The wine writers did not go stumbling through the vineyards after too much wine and no food. Watermill made sure they ate a hearty breakfast, provided by Andrae's Kitchen in Walla Walla.

This is the main dish, steak eggs Benedict, a flatiron steak on a housemade English muffin topped with eggs and hollandaise. On the side, potatoes with caramelized Walla Walla spring onions.

Named for Chef Andrae Bopp, Andrae's Kitchen developed from pop-up dining and a food truck into a permanent site, located at a Cenex gas station in Walla Walla. 

If The Rocks District is famous for grapes and Watermill is known for wines and cider, Andrae's is famous too. Its awards include best food truck restaurant in North America in 2016 and best gas station breakfast in America the same year. 

Breaking Down Walls with Wine

Be glad you are free and able to drink this wine. 

It's Concrete Mama, a Grenache from a Washington state winery called The Walls. 

Both Concrete Mama and The Walls are nicknames for Washington State Penitentiary, a men's prison located in Walla Walla.

The Walls winery isn't making a joke of this sad place. It's concerned also with the walls people place around themselves, walls that sharing good wine and food can help to break down.

There were no walls of any kind when The Walls head winemaker Ali Mayfield (above, right) poured wines at a dinner for visiting media. Mayfield even shared the limelight with another Washington winery, Force Majeure, represented by Carrie Alexander (partly shown at the left).

The dinner took place outdoors at Passatempo Taverna in Walla Walla, which is owned by  Mike Martin, owner of The Walls.

Dinner started with the 2018 Cruel Summer, a Grenache Rosé so named because a summer without Rosé would be a cruel thing.

Then came the 2016 La Lutte (the fight), a Chardonnay from The Walls, perhaps named for the energy that went into making it. 

From Force Majeure came Parvata, a Mourvedre, Syrah and Grenache blend. Parvata is Sanskrit for mountain, Alexander said. The grapes came mainly from the winery's vineyard in Washington's Red Mountain AVA, which is known for high quality grapes.

Then came tastings of Force Majeure Syrahs from Red Mountain and the SJR Vineyard in The Rocks District (above), which sells grapes to premium wineries and produces Delmas wines that sell out by allocation--there's even a wait to get on the allocation list. These were followed by a side by side tasting of 2016 Cabernet Sauvignons from both wineries.

Meanwhile, smoke rose from grilling in the patio.

Lamb chops fresh off the grill were perfect with the red wines. 

Before the lamb came plates of cured meats and bread.

Asparagus grown by Walla Walla area farmers was in prime condition. It was delicious pickled and served with the salumi.

Radicchio salad with gorgonzola really woke up the taste buds.

A roasted beet salad included goat milk ricotta, citrus and pistachios.  

These are Passatempo's polpette--meatballs in tomato sauce.

There was more, including handmade pasta, which is a Passatempo specialty, but night had covered the table with blackness, and my camera couldn't cope with it.


However, wine in the dark tasted as good as with light. 

And then we left with a look back at the restaurant, a great place to try Washington state wines thanks to the large selection on the wine list.  

Passatempo Taverna, 215 W. Main St., Walla Walla, WA 99362 (509) 876-8822.