Unlikely Pairings: Wine & Motorcycles

Cab to the bone: wino rider Greg Brisendine is still mindful of vans full of babies.

“You just have to spit more.” It’s not often I get to say those words and I treasure the opportunity.

It’s a nearly perfect combination: wine and motorcycles.  Vineyards covering rolling hills across eastern Washington. Motorcycles twisting through back roads between rows of grape vines, stopping in at wineries for tastings. Wait…what? Wine tasting on a motorcycle? Even non-bikers seem to instantly get the disharmony here.  Oddly, most folks, myself included, don’t wince at driving to a winery in a car, tasting wine, getting back in the car, tasting some more wine, getting back in the car, and so on and so on.  But on the motorcycle, there is a vague sense of my becoming an angry drunken rocket bullet aimed at mini-vans full of babies. So, you see…you just have to spit more.

Fall weekends cry out for motorcycling, and we’re happy to oblige.  Taking the roundabout route to Yakima, through Enumclaw, around Mt. Rainier and over Chinook Pass lets us appreciate some of the best Washington has to offer. Up close, Rainier dominates my field of vision while still somehow seeming surreal, like a 3D picture of itself reaching across to us as we ride. Of course, this side of the pass, it’s still quite nippy, so I hunker down into my jacket, nod companionably to Rainier and head over the path to desert warmth.

Over Chinook Pass, the air is gradually more arid, pine smells dominate, and it gets warmer.  OK then, mountains, pine trees, bright sun: check. Now it’s time for wine tasting.  We set up base camp (OK, a Holiday Inn) in Yakima and venture south.

From Yakima, through Zillah (preacher jokes and Godzilla jokes abound), to Prosser with the plan of gradually working our way back.  So many wineries and no real plan for wine tasting as much as the need to ride through beautiful wine country.  So we choose randomly, winding through back roads and taking random roads that seem to head the right way.  In various wineries, we collect double-takes for the chaps, boots and helmets.  Mini-vans full of babies, they’re thinking.

The woman behind the counter looks dubious.  Again, I think that whether pouring or drinking, we don’t seem to mind booze and cars; but take a drink with a motorcycle helmet in your hand, and I conjure images of flashing lights and smoking carnage on a blind curve at 3 a.m.  As we belly up to the bar, the woman’s dubiousness changes to nervousness. “You just have to spit more,” we say.  Smiling, we demonstrate by taking delicate hummingbird sips of the Chardonnay she pours, we swish (swishing and smiling is tough to manage, trust me), and then spit into the bucket on the bar. The whole room seems to take a sigh of relief, mothers loosen their grips on children, retired men mutter righteously and go back about their business.

So it goes, wine tasting through beautiful Eastern Washington.