Prosser, Washington

Prosser is a city along the Yakima River with a population of 5,700.  Colonel William Prosser first surveyed the area in 1879, then claimed homestead in 1882.  A flour mill was built at Prosser falls in 1887, encouraging further settlement of the area.  Throughout the 1910s and 1920s various companies drilled in this area for oil and natural gas. There were no large findings and the Great Depression put an end to exploration.  In more recent years, Prosser's prime location on the Yakima River and easy highway access has encouraged a growing wine business and associated tourist industry. Several wineries call Prosser home.

The names of the streets in our campground are The Grapevine, Cabernet, Lemberger, Petite Sirah, Concord, Riesling, and Muscat.  Some of the streets in town are named Merlot, Port, Wine Country, and Cabernet. 

They call this area “Napa North”!  The RV park has wine-tasting Thursday and Friday nights in their lobby/office from 5:30 – 7:00 p.m.  They charge $5 for the glass and if you come the second night it is half price.  A different local winery does the ‘sampling’.   Thursday night the ‘bartender’ was a young lady who had gone to West High in Bakersfield for her freshman year.

After lunch Thursday, we left to find the ‘two’ breweries in town!  Our first brewery stop was at the Whitstran Brewing Company where the bartender had sad news for Mike…. the Porter wasn’t on tap.  He tried a few dark beers and settled on purchasing two Porters that were bottled. The bartender told him about a brewery close by that we didn’t know existed.  Since it was very close, that was our second stop.  At Jeremy’s Mike tried Irish Death, which he really enjoyed, but they didn’t have it bottled and the other dark beer they had he didn’t care for. Then on to a grocery store and they only had the Irish Death in 22 ounce bottles, too large for the refrigerator in the trailer AND too much for Mike to consume at one sitting!  I guess you can’t win ‘em all!

Friday was a day of sleeping-in (isn’t that what retirement is all about for some!) and reading.  Then Mike decided to walk to the winery that he sampled last night since it was only a half a mile away and he had eight free samplings.