More On The Clore Center

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to stop in to the Walter Clore Wine and Culinary Center in Prosser. I was very impressed and spent time chatting with Abbey Cameron the Executive Director and April Reddout, the tasting room manager who gave me the grand tour. Since the tasting room opened there have been over 2300 visitors and that number continues to grow according to Reddout.

REDDOUT: Not everybody tastes. We've had 1750 tasters but a lot of people are just stopping in. They've been watching the building go up for years or they've heard about it. Now that they know it's open they want to stop in and see it so we get a lot of looky-loos, we get some industry folks that are just dropping in to say hey I just want you to know that I'm excited that you're open.

The culinary side of the Clore Center has been seeing a lot of use lately with a number of classes being given that show attendees how to make various food items and what wines will pair nicely with them.

REDDOUT: We had a really successful hand on learn how to roll your own sushi class. We've done a build your own bratwurst class, date night tapas class where people came in and some tapas plates were prepared for them and they were provided with the recipes so that they could recreate it as a date night.

And in the next class they will be featuring northwest hard ciders with delicious foods. Readout says they are excited about how the Center is growing rapidly.

REDDOUT: On the tasting room side we're really happy with the amount of dollars that people are spending when they're here. We're thrilled to have hundreds of people coming through the door every month and we know that they're going to double or triple next year

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network of the West.