Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide

INTRODUCTION

As in the original edition of this book, I have attempted once again to thoroughly cover the history, grapes, AVAs, essential vineyards, and most important wineries in Washington. Reading this book should feel like a tour through the state with an old friend who happens to be a local and who knows it well. I am that friend.

I have lived in Washington since 1972. A Seattleite (wet-sider as we’re called) for most of that time, I saw my life change dramatically in 2005 when Mrs. G and I purchased a run-down, all-but-abandoned farmhouse in the city of Waitsburg—population 1,212. Founded in the 1860s by Sylvester Wait, it is located in Washington’s southeast corner, just 18 miles north of Walla Walla. We loved Waitsburg immediately, for the natural beauty of the surrounding landscape, for the easy cordiality of the townspeople, for the peacefulness that we felt whenever we could escape from the big city and come work on our little cottage.

Since then, we’ve spent about half of every month living in eastern Washington. Rather than blasting through for a brief tour and tasting, as most wine writers do, I am now seeing the wine country through the eyes of a resident. This has deeply enriched my appreciation for, and knowledge of, the wines I review.

I remain a critic, not a cheerleader. Any region whose aspirations are to become world-class must have its wines evaluated in the context of the global competition. When I write about a winery making an exciting riesling or merlot or syrah, it goes without saying that I mean the compliment globally. These are not just good wines for the region; they are good wines for the world.

More fervently than ever, I believe that Washington State is well on its way to becoming one of the greatest wine regions in the world. This despite (or perhaps because of) its fringe location, its reliance on irrigation, its desert heat and arctic blasts, its frequent separation of growers and winemakers, its preponderance of tiny, underfunded startups, and the persistent myth that it is too cold, too wet, and too far north to make great wine. In other words, despite the fact that Washington is not, and never will be, California. When it comes to exploring unknown viticultural territory and crafting stylistically original, world-class wines, Washington has come as far or further, in less time, than California. Without California’s vast advantages, little Washington has plugged along, driven by dreamers and doers who believed that there was something magical in the land.

People such as John Williams and Jim Holmes, who bought some barren acreage on a desolate hill called Red Mountain back in 1975 and decided to grow cabernet there. People such as Dr. William McAndrew, who planted gewürztraminer and a variety of other grapes in an old apple orchard high above the Columbia Gorge in 1972, dubbed it Celilo, and waited to see what, if anything, would survive. People such as Christophe Baron, a native Champenois who made wine in half a dozen places around the world before circling for a landing in Walla Walla, then doggedly searched for land to plant until he found the rockiest, least likely, most difficult and labor-intensive soil in the region and hand-planted his Cailloux vineyard to syrah.

Newcomers continue to flock to Washington, often abandoning careers in midlife, pulling up stakes and following their winemaking dreams. In these pages you’ll find dozens of new wineries, with names such as Cadaretta, Doubleback, Gramercy Cellars, Hard Row To Hoe, Maison Bleue, Rasa, Tranche, and Trust—all ventures begun by folks who had already built successful lives, but were consumed with a desire to make wine in Washington.

Today Ciel du Cheval and Klipsun cabernet, Champoux merlot and cabernet franc, Celilo gewürztraminer, and Cailloux syrah (to name just a few) can stake a legitimate claim to greatness. They have all passed the test of time, and also the test of timelessness. These vineyards express that elusive, often abused (and misspelled) term terroir. Washington’s vignerons are beginning to find it, and in the pages of this book you will learn specifically who and what and where.

There is something magical in this land. The pioneers were right about that, as are those who continue to explore and expand viticulture in Washington today. It’s true that the eleven AVAs now officially recognized include millions of acres of land that is not, and will never be, dedicated to wine grape growing. But tucked away here and there are the sites that work, that have the potential, if properly managed, to create exceptional wines. Finding those places is what has obsessed those who have pioneered winemaking during the first few decades of Washington’s modern wine era.

The exploration continues, in previously untapped regions such as Lake Chelan, a new AVA that may hold the key to great Washington pinot noir, if such is ever to exist; in potential future AVAs such as the Ancient Lakes, where vineyards barely a decade old are producing grapes with astonishing complexity, minerality, and verve; and in the outer reaches of well-established AVAs such as Walla Walla, where the newest vineyards are reaching higher into the mountains and pushing deeper into wheat country than ever before.

For a wine lover, Washington is experiencing a delicious moment in time. How many people in the history of the world have witnessed the flowering of a brand-new, world-class wine region? Who among us has tasted, in each new vintage, wines that push the envelope a bit further than it has previously been pushed, that reveal unknown or unsuspected layers of flavor and bouquet, nuances previously locked away in a piece of scrub desert, or a rocky riverbed, or a mountainside blanketed in volcanic dust?

The dust of exploration has not entirely settled, to be sure, but it continues to be mapped, studied, ripped, planted, trellised, irrigated, fertilized, chronicled, and delineated into more and more meaningful subregions. The wineries and vineyards that survived the mistakes and trials of Washington’s early years have learned some hard-won lessons, making it easier for those who follow in their footsteps to craft excellent wines (though competing for customers in such a crowded marketplace has never been more difficult).

Honest feedback from a well-informed, widely traveled wine journalist can be quite valuable to any winery willing to listen to what is being said. In an effort to ensure that my words of praise ring true to readers, I must be carefully selective. The first edition of this book included only about one quarter of the state’s wineries. This edition expands that to a third—roughly double the previous number of winery entries. That is both to acknowledge the industry’s rampant growth and to recognize that improvement in quality is ongoing and pervasive.

Nonetheless, I’m still leaving out two-thirds of those who make wine for a living in Washington, and believe me, they are not likely to be selling my book in their tasting rooms or singing its praises to their customers. But I am writing this for you consumers, who don’t need another guidebook that simply lists every winery and salutes its wines as if all were created equal. You know, and I know, they are not.

My methodology and palate preferences, as I explain on my website (www.paulgregutt.com), are as follows. I prefer to taste wines for review when they are finished and bottled rather than in barrel, and just ahead of their official release dates. I taste in controlled settings, using proper stemware, and I give the wines as much time and attention as they deserve, often returning to them over a period of days. Several times each month I sit down at one-on-one tastings with winemakers, distributors, or importers. I also attend trade events and participate in two long-established tasting groups whose members include winemakers, wine distributors, wine retailers, and knowledgeable consumers.

I seek out those wines that best demonstrate typicity, specificity, clarity, elegance, polish, depth, and balance. If the wine is varietal, I want it to taste like the varietal. If it is from a specific place, I want to taste something unique that is derived from that place. If a wine is designated by vineyard, clone, or block; if it is labeled old vine or winemaker’s select or reserve, I think it should justify that verbiage by showing me something specific and special. It’s OK by me if a wine is light, as long as it is not thin; elegant, but not wimpy; powerful, but not brutal; dense, but not monolithic. Obviously the qualities I seek are more easily found at higher price points, but when I recommend an inexpensive wine, you may be certain it stands out well above its peers.

In the first edition of this book, I embarked upon a rather quixotic quest to recalibrate the nearly ubiquitous 100-point scoring system. I decided to do this because, as I explained, the purported 100-point scale, in actual practice, is not a 100-point scale at all, nor even close. For all practical purposes, it has become a 10-point scale. Wines rated under 85 are ignored completely. Wines rated 85 to 89 must be marketed as value wines—those numbers work only for wines priced at the low end of the scale. If your wine is going to sell for $15 or more, it must hit 90 points at least. Once a wine moves up the ladder from there, it becomes increasingly rare and expensive. As a result, wines scoring 95 or above are virtually unobtainable.

I felt it made more sense to use at least half of the 100-point scale—allotting scores between 50 and 100—and to score wineries rather than individual wines. With that in mind, I awarded up to 30 points each for style, consistency, and value, and up to 10 points for the winery’s contribution to the development and improvement of the Washington wine industry. And just to be very clear, I emphasized that every winery included in the book was, in my view, well above average. Every score, even one in the 50s or 60s, was a good score in this radically revised 100-point system.

This new edition does not use numerical ratings. I made my point, and most readers and reviewers appreciate what I was trying to do. This time, I’ve adopted a much simpler star rating. The exact same standards are being applied; it’s just the scoring system that is simplified. As before, wineries are being evaluated for a combination of strengths, particularly style, consistency, and value, displayed over a period of time.

In terms of style, I am looking for wineries with a unique, clearly defined, technically flawless style. When I taste a Leonetti Cellar wine, for example, I recognize a particular combination of superb fruit, layering of barrel flavors, and satiny, impactful, seductive mouthfeel that is unique and that has been a hallmark of the winery for three decades. That’s what a five-star winery does in terms of style. Every winery in this book is making strides toward establishing its own style. It’s not easy to do. There are thousands upon thousands of great guitar players, but how many can you identify on the basis of, say, two or three well-struck notes? It’s not easy to be really good, but it’s much harder to be unique.

Consistency is simply a measure of experience. Young wineries are experimenting, changing blends, changing vineyard sources, working hard to define themselves. The best will eventually settle into a style and stay there consistently, but that takes time. Wineries that have succeeded in making excellent wines over many vintages naturally deserve a higher rating than those just getting started.

Value is not the same as cheap. There are plenty of $6 and $8 wines in the world that are not good values. And there are a few $50 or even $100 wines that are exceptional values, given the quality. My Top 100 lists, published on pages 303–313, are a good indication of which wines offer both exceptional quality and outstanding value. You will find twenty wineries singled out as five-star wineries, forty-five four-star wineries, sixty three-star wineries, and in the Rising Stars chapter, dozens of Washington’s newest wineries, their careers just taking off, that have already caught my attention with outstanding wines.

If you already have your own list of favorite Washington wineries, you may find one or two missing from my own selections. Please do not take offense. Some are simply too new to evaluate. Some do not choose to take advantage of the many opportunities to submit their wines for review. Some simply do not suit my personal tastes.

There are many sources, both in print and online, that offer opinions and ratings about wines. Even the most educated palates frequently disagree. I belong to two long-established tasting groups that count among their members winemakers, distributors, retailers, and salespeople, many of them with impressive credentials and decades of experience. The roundtable discussions that our blind tastings ignite are never dull, usually hilarious, and frequently combative. They certainly sharpen my thinking and my palate, and I thank my fellow tasters (you know who you are) for sharing your time and talents so generously.

I think there is value in such group discussions, but when you read of medals awarded or points given to individual wines by tasting/judging panels, no matter how well credentialed, you may be certain that compromise was involved. When wines are reviewed and scored by a single individual, one person’s palate is involved, not the decision of a committee. You can agree or disagree, but at least you have a compass and an orientation.

I taste roughly six thousand to eight thousand wines annually, mostly at home, in peer group flights. I supplement these tastings with numerous trips to wineries throughout Washington, along the West Coast, and overseas. As I live half of the time in Seattle and the other half in Walla Walla County, I travel regularly throughout the length and breadth of Washington wine country. As often as time permits, I taste new releases with winemakers, believing that the information gleaned from our conversations outweighs any chance that my impressions will be overly influenced by their presence.

I do not like hit-and-run wine judging. There are snapshots and there are movies; I think wines are movies that should be observed in motion. With that in mind, I taste wines slowly, over many hours, with and without food, and sometimes over several days. I believe that there are times when we must extend ourselves to a wine and give it a decent chance to show its stuff.

One reason that massive, jammy, oaky, fruit-bomb wines tend to win high scores and gold medals is that they stand out quickly during rapid-fire wine tastings. If a wine is one of 150 or 200 bottles being sampled in a single day (this is standard practice at wine judgings!), is it any wonder that only the biggest, brawniest, most forward and ripe will be noticed? I have lost count of the times that a young wine, just opened, failed to perform. Wines submitted for review are new releases; many have just recently been blended and bottled. They have had little time to settle down and may be a bit shocked. But give these wines a few hours or even days, and they may open up beautifully. Which is the more accurate impression—the instant snapshot or the film clip?

Of course, there are many wines whose simplistic structure or generic character are instantly apparent. Retasting after some hours have passed merely serves to confirm the original opinion. Flawed wines with TCA, microbial taint, oxidation, volatile acidity, and so forth are also easily and quickly chronicled. But often it is the very wines that best demonstrate terroir—whose innate structure, balance, clarity, precision, and depth portend ageworthiness—that are wrapped up tight as mummies when first opened. These are the gems that will benefit from extra hours of breathing and decanting. These are the wines that are easiest to miss in a hit-and-run evaluation.

I especially value wines that do not obliterate nuance in favor of the crowd-pleasing flavors of new oak. Wines built upon grapes ripened to appropriate levels for their particular vineyard site. Wines with complex and detailed aromas, with well-defined fruit, and with balancing acids and tannins that are harmoniously integrated into the whole. The wines that I most enjoy and constantly search for are those that have a focus. They taste like something specific—a particular grape variety or well-defined varietal blend, grown and made into wine in a special place.

The best wines reflect the soil, climate, and vintage conditions of the vineyard. The French word terroir, which has no English equivalent, describes a wine that expresses the grape, the soil, the site, and the climate through its complex scents and flavors. Excessive ripeness, super-extraction, alcohol topping 15, 16, or even 17 percent (in unfortified dry wines!), and the ham-handed application of expensive new oak—the formula for many so-called cult wines—will obliterate terroir (if it is there to begin with).

Such jammy, flashy, high-octane, hedonistic wines are rarely fit companions at mealtime. Their very bigness—Port-like levels of fruit and alcohol, smelling like a lumber yard—makes it difficult to down a second glass. Many vintners in this state recognize that bigger is not necessarily better. Washington’s unique geography gives them the opportunity, the potential, to ripen grapes to physiological maturity while retaining high natural acid levels and keeping sugars and pH in balance. If the vineyard is sited well, the vines are managed well, the picking is done at the right time, and the winemaking is noninterventionist, there is a real chance to find that elusive terroir.

Terroir-driven wines have the best chance of aging over the long term. Throughout both editions of this book, I have noted vertical tastings of Washington wines, from vintages going back as many as 30 years. They prove that this state has the ability to produce wines with the structure and character not only to last but to improve. Among the white wines, it is riesling that will last the longest, as a ten-year retrospective of Eroica recently demonstrated (they all had many years of life still ahead). Washington merlots can improve for at least a decade and continue to provide drinking pleasure for another decade. Some cabernets and Bordeaux blends may last even longer.

On average, I would recommend drinking most white wines within three years of their release, though rieslings (and perhaps other aromatic whites, such as gewürztraminer) can be held far longer. Washington syrahs are a bit of a mystery; they are almost always peak performers when very young, and I have had little opportunity to taste extensively of well-aged versions.

Merlots should generally be consumed within six to eight years; cabernets within ten to twelve. Wines that are especially high in alcohol (more than 15 percent) and unusually low in acid (or high in pH), that display powerful barrel aromas and flavors, along with raisin or prune, or that show early hints of oxidation or browning are not likely to cellar well.

Back in the 1970s a typical bottle of Washington cabernet would have between 12 and 12.5 percent alcohol. Today the average is at least two percentage points higher. The interesting thing is that some of those older wines have aged beautifully. They may have been underripe by today’s standards, but with the passing of time they have evolved flavors that are closer to European wines than most others made in America. These occasional early successes clearly point the way to a Washington winemaking style that straddles the border between the massive, fruit-powered wines of California and the more acidic, austere, herbal, mineral-laced, terroir-driven wines of Europe.

A number of wineries in Washington are actively exploring this borderline, crafting superb wines that suit the twenty-first-century palate, that beautifully accompany the foods we most enjoy—wines that will not only persist but evolve over time. These wines are the beacons that show us where to find true terroir in these brand-new New World vineyards. They are the wineries that often draw my highest praise in these pages.

AUTHOR’S NOTE: For ongoing, up-to-the-minute information on Washington wines, wineries, vineyards, events, and tourism, as well as lively discussions of wine industry topics, please visit www.paulgregutt.com.

PART 1

HISTORY AND TERROIR

1

WHICH SIDE OF THE POTOMAC?

A Brief History of Washington Wines

For many years Bob Betz, a Master of Wine (MW) who now has his own Betz Family winery, traveled the globe speaking to audiences on behalf of Stimson Lane (the corporate parent of Columbia Crest and Chateau Ste. Michelle, among others). His standard spiel neatly encapsulated the story of the wineries, their vineyards, and the growth of winemaking in Washington. Nonetheless, he found that a certain amount of confusion persisted among a significant percentage of his audiences. At one particular East Coast appearance, he recalls, his audience seemed to be paying close attention, following his every word, carefully studying the charts and photographs, and showing keen interest in his subject. Wrapping up his presentation, Betz asked if there were any questions. A hand shot up. Just one question, Bob. Which side of the Potomac did you say the grapes were grown on?

For most consumers who do not live on the West Coast of the United States, the name Washington is most closely identified with the District of Columbia, the nation’s capital. In other countries, most wine drinkers know that the Napa Valley is in California, somewhere north of Disneyland. Beyond that, things get pretty vague. Washington State? It’s up there a ways, pretty close to Alaska.

Compounding the confusion caused by this state’s name is its schizophrenic geography. In terms of climate, precipitation, and the overall look and feel of the landscape, it splits neatly into two completely different halves, which may conveniently be labeled the wet side and the dry side. If you hold out your left hand, palm facing you, fingers folded, thumb spread, you have a perfect map of Washington state. Your thumb is the Olympic Peninsula, with the Pacific Ocean on the left and Puget Sound on the right. Follow the line between your index and middle fingers on down to your wrist; there you have the Cascade Mountains, a relatively young and still active range of volcanoes best known for Mount Baker, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, and across the Oregon border, Mount Hood. Pretty much everything from the bottom of the other three fingers to the wrist is desert or, as the locals like to think of it, wine country.

On the wet side, the Olympic Mountains, which would run down the center of your thumb, parallel to the Cascades, are the first shield against the massive storms that blow in from the Pacific. They turn Puget Sound into a perpetual convergence zone, with weather systems coming up from the south or down from the north and colliding, usually somewhere right around Seattle. Though not as wet or cold as its reputation would have it, the climate in western Washington allows only cool-climate wine grapes (and hybrids) to ripen.

The Cascades act as the second barrier to the moisture-laden Pacific fronts and pretty much soak up the lion’s share of the rain and snow that those storms bring. Once across the mountain passes, you descend through alpine forests into dryer and dryer meadows and valleys that ultimately open onto the great deserts of eastern Washington.

Eastern Washington had nonmilitary white settlements before the western side did, and wine grapes were being grown in the Walla Walla Valley by the 1860s. More than a half century of growth and experimentation, on both sides of the state, came to an abrupt end with Prohibition. I thought there were no commercially viable pre-Prohibition vines left in Washington, until I toured Snipes Mountain with Todd Newhouse and saw muscat vines the size of trees, which he believes were planted right around 1917.

It would be misleading to say that the modern era of winemaking in Washington began with Repeal, as it did in California. Although it is true that many new wineries were bonded at that time, they made no varietal wines and only occasionally and haphazardly used vinifera grapes. In western Washington, most wines were produced from Island Belle grapes, grown on Stretch Island in south Puget Sound. In the vineyards of eastern Washington, field blends might have included anything and everything, from Concord and Campbell Early (another name for Island Belle) to zinfandel, muscat, and alicanté bouschet.

These grapes were harvested all together, tossed into fermenters together, and made into unfortified sweet wines. Many of the best-selling wines were produced by a so-called high fermentation technique that added bags of sugar to the fermenting grapes and used special yeasts to boost alcohol levels to 17 percent, the maximum allowed by the state. Labeled Burgundy, Rhine Riesling, Sauternes, and so on, these wines accounted for the lion’s share of Washington wine sales right through the 1960s. A thirsty public, freed from the restrictions of Prohibition and beginning to recover from the Great Depression, wanted a good buzz, not terroir.

In retrospect, post-Prohibition liquor laws in Washington seem to have been designed, purposely or not, to block meaningful attempts to make European-style dry table wines and to create a protected market for sweet, high-fermentation wines. In 1934, the Washington State Liquor Act was passed, which created the Liquor Control Board. The Washington State Liquor Control Board regulates and controls the sales of all hard liquor to this day. Initially, it allowed only beer and wine to be sold by the glass, in licensed restaurants and taverns. Wine, according to the WSLCB, was anything fermented that contained no more than 17 percent alcohol.

Ironically, this created the incentive to manufacture wines with unnaturally high levels of both sugar and alcohol, to satisfy the desires of consumers who couldn’t get served a cocktail or glass of whiskey. Part and parcel of these laws were trade restrictions that taxed out-of-state wineries heavily but allowed Washington wineries to sell directly to retail accounts. The price advantages, designed to foster the local industry, also meant that few quality wines from California or anywhere else could find much of a market in Washington.

By 1937, forty-two wineries were licensed in the state, mostly small and devoted to making fruit wines rather than grape wines. The local products were the mainstay alcoholic beverages of the taverns, while the California brands were offered (at substantially higher prices) in the state liquor stores and some restaurants. The Washington wineries banded together to push their advantage, and taxes on California wines were repeatedly raised. By the end of 1942, notes author Ron Irvine in The Wine Project: Washington State’s Winemaking History (now out of print), there were just twenty-four Washington wineries, but they controlled almost two-thirds of the total wine sales in the state.

Legally permissible alcohol levels continued to rise, and fortified wines replaced the sugar-enhanced, 17-percenters of the prewar years. By 1948, Irvine reports, 85 percent of all Washington wines were fortified. But the Washington wine industry was again in decline, and the number of wineries in the state began dropping steadily.

The legislative tug-of-war between competing interests, and the conflicted attempts by the state legislature to support the Washington wine industry with tax breaks and other measures while its own Liquor Control Board promoted the sales of California wines, has been well chronicled elsewhere. It delayed for two decades the birth of the modern-day Washington wine industry.

In the late 1960s, two startling events brought revolutionary change virtually overnight. The first was a chance encounter between Wines of America author Leon Adams, making a visit to the Yakima Valley in 1966, and Victor Allison, the manager for American Wine Growers. Allison had taken notice of the growing interest in California varietal wines and begun experimenting with a few of his own. Adams happened across just a single memorable Washington wine on that trip, a rosé of grenache, made by Associated Vintners (A/V), a group of amateur winemakers from the University of Washington.

The founding members of A/V had banded together in the 1950s, intending to make dry varietal wines for their own consumption. They incorporated in 1962 and a year later purchased and planted a small vineyard, Harrison Hill, in the heart of the Yakima Valley. Dr. Cornelius Peck, one of the ten who started the enterprise, recalled in an interview a few years ago that so little was known about growing vinifera grapes in Washington that A/V’s members planted nine different varieties on their five acres to see which grapes, if any, might survive.

Apparently, grenache was an early survivor, and was made into the epiphany-producing rosé that so impressed Leon Adams. He suggested to Victor Allison that a good California winemaker might be able to make something even better with Washington grapes, and mentioned the name of André Tchelistcheff, the man behind the great wines of Beaulieu Vineyards. Allison brought Tchelistcheff to Washington the following year, and, after plowing through a selection of dismal offerings, he tasted another Associated Vintners wine, this one a gewürztraminer, and was immediately convinced that the potential existed to make great wine from Washington grapes.

Encouraged by the praise of Adams and Tchelistcheff, the Associated Vintners decided to sell their wines commercially. Tchelistcheff was hired as a consultant for American Wine Growers. His first wines were produced in 1967 and included a cabernet, a pinot noir, a sémillon, and a grenache. The second paradigm-shifting event occurred in March 1969, when the so-called California Wine Bill was passed. It eliminated the trade barriers that had propped up the Washington wine industry since Repeal and, for the first time, legalized retail wine sales off-premises. The Washington wine industry had finally entered the twentieth century.

THE 1970s

In 1970, no more than a half dozen commercial wineries were operating in Washington State. The two of lasting importance, Associated Vintners and AWG’s Ste. Michelle brand, were making varietal wines from a number of different grapes, and they quickly began attracting the attention of wine lovers from out of state.

A group called the San Francisco Wine Sampling Club tasted a number of Ste. Michelle wines in 1970 and pronounced them a serious challenge to California varietal wines. The influential California wine writer Robert Balzer conducted a riesling competition a few years later and announced that a 1972 Johannisberg riesling from Ste. Michelle had bested entries from California, Germany, and Australia.

Spurred by the growing interest in varietal wines, Ste. Michelle, which was acquired by conglomerate U.S. Tobacco in 1974, began planting extensive vineyards in eastern Washington. Others were conducting their own experiments in far-flung corners of the state. The Associated Vintners continued to cultivate their vines in the Yakima Valley, near Sunnyside. Jim Holmes and John Williams began their exploration of Red Mountain. Gary Figgins tended an acre or two in Walla Walla. Charles Henderson planted riesling, gewürztraminer, pinot noir, and other grapes in the Bingen–White Salmon area of the Columbia Gorge, and in 1972, Dr. William McAndrew followed suit at his Celilo vineyard. A few miles farther west, Lincoln and Joan Wolverton planted pinot noir, chardonnay, and riesling at La Center, somewhat whimsically calling their vineyard the northernmost extension of the Willamette Valley.

This was the first great wave of Washington viticulture, boosted along by more and more visionaries, such as Mike Wallace, Bill Preston, Maury Balcom, Don Mercer, Mike Sauer, and Jerry Bookwalter, among many others. Ste. Michelle Vintners became Ste. Michelle Vineyards and planted cabernet and riesling at their Cold Creek site. But the most far-reaching event was the purchase of the Ste. Michelle brand, vineyards, and winemaking facilities by U.S. Tobacco (UST) in 1974. From then on, the company controlled the vast majority of Washington State’s varietal wine vineyards and production.

By the end of the decade, Washington had roughly a dozen wineries and 2,600 acres of vinifera vineyard. Despite a severe freeze in the winter of 1979, the future, as a very young Bill Gates might have said, was so bright you needed sunglasses.

THE 1980s

Washington had shown that it could make competitive varietal wines. But the state’s reputation for periodic arctic blasts seemed intact. If its vines were constantly being frozen back to the roots, it seemed a gamble to look beyond winter-hardy, northern European grapes and even hardier hybrids.

Somehow, a critical number of growers were not deterred. Many were farmers, whose view of wine grapes was that they were just another crop to be added to the mix of hops, potatoes, mint, asparagus, apples, cherries, Concords, and so on that was already in the ground. They were used to the weather problems. Grapes were planted, as a general rule, in the most fertile soils, watered heavily, and harvested early. Getting the crop in, rather than maximizing wine quality, was paramount.

The Yakima Valley, a fertile crescent extending from the city of Yakima in the west almost to the Tri-Cities in the east (Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco), attracted the most attention. It had plenty of water, supported well-established agricultural enterprises, and was already planted to some of Washington’s oldest, most proven vineyards. Other significant vineyard developments were concentrated in the Columbia Basin, north of the Tri-Cities, and south of Prosser, in the Horse Heaven Hills above the Columbia River.

As the decade began, Ste. Michelle and Associated Vintners (renamed Columbia Winery) were the state’s big players, along with a few smaller, family-owned vineyard and winery operations (Kiona, Hinzerling, Mont Elise, Preston, Yakima River) and a handful of boutiques (Leonetti Cellar, Neuharth, Quilceda Creek, Worden’s). But as the ’80s swung into full stride, more and more large-scale, family-run, and cooperative enterprises appeared: Hogue Cellars, Hyatt Vineyards, Gordon Brothers, Mercer Ranch Vineyards, Quail Run, Quarry Lake Vintners, and Tagaris among them. A wave of smaller mom-and-pop wineries, many without vineyards of their own, followed quickly: Arbor Crest, Barnard Griffin, Bonair, Bookwalter, Chinook, Latah Creek, L’Ecole No 41, Pontin del Roza, Portteus, Salishan, Tucker Cellars, Woodward Canyon, and dozens more.

When it opened in 1982, Chateau Ste. Michelle’s Paterson Winery, as Columbia Crest was first known, represented an extraordinary $25 million commitment to the future of Washington wine. Along with the state-of-the-art winemaking facility (capacity 2 million gallons) came almost 2,000 acres of new vineyard—an instant 50 percent increase for the state.

Perhaps the most important development of the decade, even more important than the wine industry’s steady growth, was national acclaim for some of Washington’s red wines. Though Ste. Michelle and Columbia were certainly doing a very good job, especially with their single-vineyard cabernets, much of the interest from out of state was focused on a few of the new boutiques, notably Leonetti Cellar, Quilceda Creek, Woodward Canyon, L’Ecole No 41, and Hogue Cellars.

Hogue’s 1983 Reserve cabernet sauvignon dazzled the judges at the Atlanta Wine Festival, who named the wine Best of Show. Made by Rob Griffin (his Barnard Griffin winery was begun that same year), it revealed a combination of silky elegance and pure fruit-driven power that few outside the state had ever witnessed in a Washington red. Leonetti’s 1978 cabernet sauvignon (the winery’s first commercial release) made the cover of a long-gone wine publication (Wine and Spirits Buying Guide) and was touted as the best cab in the country. Quilceda Creek’s first vintage, a 1979 cabernet sauvignon, brought home the Grand Prize from the prestigious Enological Society. L’Ecole’s 1983 merlot (also its first commercial vintage) won a gold medal from the Enological Society a few years later. Latah Creek’s 1983 merlot was given a gold medal at the Sixteenth International Wine and Spirits Competition in Bristol, England. And the fledgling Washington Wine Writers’ Association voted the 1984 Woodward Canyon Dedication Series cabernet sauvignon the wine of the year in 1986.

Throughout the decade, vineyard-designated wines began to appear, first as a trickle and then with increasing regularity. The state’s first AVAs were named in quick succession: Yakima Valley, Walla Walla Valley, and the all-encompassing Columbia Valley. The first significant European investment in Washington’s wine industry was made when Germany’s F. W. Langguth family, along with a group of Washington investors, planted the 265-acre Weinbau vineyard and built an ultramodern, 35,000-square-foot winery in the desolate sagebrush desert outside Mattawa. Langguth’s commitment to producing Germanic rieslings was decades ahead of its time, as was its foresight in developing the region that would later become known as the Wahluke Slope, Washington’s eighth AVA and home to some of its most important vineyards.

The number of wineries tripled, from fewer than twenty at the beginning of the decade to sixty by 1989. Vineyard acreage grew more slowly, from 7,742 acres in 1981 (more than half of them newly planted and nonbearing) to 9,000 bearing acres in 1989. But although Washington’s total wine production lacked the sheer quantity to command much of a presence outside the state, trends were appearing that would set the stage for vast changes in the decade ahead.

In the mid-1980s, the Washington Wine Commission and its companion Washington Wine Institute were funded and began their efforts to promote and legislate for Washington vintners. The commission’s first World Vinifera Conference, held in Seattle in the summer of 1989, brought winemakers from around the world to Washington State and matched Washington’s rieslings with the best from elsewhere. Wine Country magazine named Chateau Ste. Michelle Best American Winery in 1988. Wine Spectator magazine included five Washington wines in its Top 100 list for 1989.

Meanwhile, Columbia winemaker David Lake and grower Mike Sauer were quietly laying the foundation for some of the most exciting Washington red wines of the next decade. At Sauer’s Red Willow vineyard, just east of the Cascades, syrah cuttings from Joseph Phelps went into the ground in 1986, and the first varietal Washington syrah was produced by Columbia in 1988. As the decade drew to a close, syrah was still an experiment, but merlot was about to become the ticket to Washington’s red wine stardom.

THE 1990s

When television’s 60 Minutes broadcast the legendary French Paradox segment in November 1991, little did the producers realize that it would ignite a revolution in wine drinking and that tiny Washington state would benefit hugely as a result. At the time, most wine drinkers in America were sticking to white wines and sweet pink versions of red grapes. The very notion of wine as a beverage of moderation was under attack from a neo-Prohibitionist movement that seemed to be gaining strength from month to month. In the eyes of that powerful lobby, wine was just another addictive drug, no different than heroin. The French Paradox story suggested otherwise. Not only was wine an essential part of a meal, it said, but red wine was a beverage that actually had proven health benefits. Voilà! Suddenly, drinking red wine was a certifiably Good Thing. Given permission to enjoy their red wines guilt-free, consumers embraced them. And merlot, which until then had been a rather listless player on the world stage, became the red wine of choice.

As luck would have it, the Washington Wine Commission’s second World Vinifera Conference, held in July 1991, had chosen merlot as its focus. In a Wine Spectator interview some years later, Simon Siegl, executive director of the Washington Wine Commission from 1988 to 1996, recalled that the topic was selected for marketing reasons more than anything else. California already owned cabernet, but merlot remained unclaimed; there was far less competition in the category. Furthermore, Stimson Lane (the umbrella company for all of the UST wineries) had planted a lot of merlot, particularly at its Columbia Crest winery and vineyard. The company was eager to back any event that would promote Washington merlot to the rest of the world. And finally, merlot enjoyed the same general advantages as chardonnay: it was French, and it was a lot easier to pronounce than, say, gewürztraminer.

The merlot conference clicked, and along with the 60 Minutes story it resulted in a perfect marketing storm, propelling the image of merlot. Washington, many were coming to believe, was making better merlots than any place outside of France, and not just the limited, expensive boutique bottlings; Columbia Crest was the state’s (and later the country’s) leading producer of value merlot, priced for supermarket shelves. Early in the decade, Washington’s merlot vineyard acreage had overtaken plantings of cabernet to become the state’s most widely planted red wine grape. During the next eight years, that acreage increased by a factor of five, to 5,600 acres in 1999.

By the mid-1990s it seemed that Washington merlot was everywhere. Merlot specialists such as Leonetti Cellar began to command Bordeaux-like prices for wines that sold out months before being released. Merlot was both trendy and spendy. National publications that had scorned Washington as the land of cheap riesling were falling all over themselves to honor the state’s reds, especially its merlots, as the most Bordeaux-like in the land.

Columbia introduced the Milestone merlot from the Red Willow vineyard. DeLille Cellars’ D2 blend featured merlot in the starring role. Andrew Will made as many as six different merlots annually, including four vineyard-designated bottlings, a blended Washington version, and a few cases of an R reserve. Chateau