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Wine Blog

More vacation tasting notes

Posted by: Trudy and Rob

Monday, August 4, 2008 4:17 PM

Well, we are recently back from a Pacific Northwest swing that just happened to include (surprise) a brief visit to the wine country in Washington state. We went to Yakima, just on the eastern side of the Cascade mountains. While the town itself poses no particular threat of siphoning visitors away from the Napa/Sonoma scene, there are many wineries located witin easy driving range of the town. For the sake of the blog, we visited many of them! And, you ask, what did we find?

Geographically, the landscape can seem a bit harsh, consisting mostly of arid valleys and ridges extending up to about 3000 feet or so. And it can be hot in the summer. Oven hot. However, when irrigation water is brought in, many crops flourish. Of prime interest for us, of course, was the grape.While many of the best of the Washington wineries such as Andrew Will and Leonetti lie farther to th east in the Walla Walla area, there are many good ones just east of Yakima and a few bad ones as well. As for the good, one of our favorites was Terra Blanca which had a new, modern tasting room and many good wines. We ended up buying a relatively unoaked chardonnay, a late harvest chenin blanc, and several tasty reds. I think these wines tasted even better when we tried them because we had just visited oneof the worst wineries any of us had ever been to. There were four of us tasting there and not a one of us could believe just how awful the wines were at this winery. To protect the guilty I don't think that I'll name the place right now, but the wines were truly awful. There was not a wine to be tasted that was newer than the 2000 vintage, a circumstance that should set off alarm bells right away. Each and every wine was oxidized. The reds had turned a dull brick red color and I couldn't even bring myself to try a white. Trudy did. She survived, but I believe she said something to the effect of it being the worst white she'd ever had. On the whole, it was kind of like the anti-winery. We actually felt a bit sorry for them as we left (although not sorry enough to purchase anything) and wondered if there might not be some kind of internal crisis at this small, family run winery. After visiting this place, Terra Blanca seemed to indeed produce necter of the gods. Even without considering the comparison of the two wineries, Terra Blanca does produce very good wines.

Another winery we very much enjoyed was Kestrel. They have a relatively inexpensive product line, say in the teens or so, and a reserve line. The regular lines were OK, but I ended up purchasing some of their reserve cabernet and syrah. The list of wineries goes on and on, and we did the best we could in two days of tasting. We also visited the Washington tasting room in Seattle on a little street about a half block from Pike PLace. They offer wine from about a dozen wineries in central and eastern Washington. It's a lot easier there than the drive across the Cascades. It takes about two and a half hours to reach Yakima from Seattle. It's a pretty drive for the most part and as an added bonus you can stop off in the town of Rosalyn for lunch as you drive east. They shot exteriors for the show Northern Exposure there and it's small and quaint. Go visit The Brick for lunch.

The best wines out of Washington are the Bordeaux varietals (cabernet, merlot, cab franc and the like) and the Rhone varietals such as syrah. Many are available here at our local shops. If you haven't tried Washington states's wines, give them a try. A lot of folks have tried the readily available Chateau St. Michelle and Columbia Crest wines, but there are many others as well. They usually offer pretty good value and, at the top end, they an be among the best you can find anywhere.