Taste and Tote & Oregon Wines Fly Free

It's Vine to Wine Wednesday on the Fruit Grower Report. With a program designed to make it easy for our wine tourists to take NW wine with them. Here is John Cooper President and CEO of Yakima Tourism to explain:

Cooper: Taste and Tote was formed about four years ago and it is a partnership between the tourism offices in the Yakima Valley, Tri-Cities and Walla Walla under the Washington Country Wine Alliance. That's our organization that we are working it through. And the primary focus of the program is working with Alaska Air, people are able to check a case of wine per person for free on Alaska air from those three cities to their domestic destination as long as they are properly wrapped and packaged, it's an incentive to use air transportation while visiting us here in wine country. In addition we have over 200 wineries that will wave tasting fees if somebody comes into the tasting room with a current air ticket from Alaska Airlines so it's been a very successful and popular program for our visitors as they leave wine country.

300 participating tasting rooms in Oregon are also part of this Alaska partnership. Instead of taste and tote its called Oregon wines fly free. visit oregonwinesflyfree.org.