Don't Pee On Me And Tell Me That It's $60 Cab-Sav

Walla Walla, WA, doesn't live up to the hype.

Awhile ago I read an article about Walla Walla, probably in the NYT, singing the praises of its wines: good soil, French expats, etc. So my co-conspirator and I, decided to pay the area a visit this weekend. We were in the neighborhood anyway for oh-so-much-fun Thanksgiving family togetherness and felt that wine tasting would be a good way to decompress from the craziness. The tactic didn't work; the entire experience made me vaguely cranky.

I was originally going to title this post "Graceful Monotony" because it seemed that everywhere we went we were drinking the same wine. During the course of the visit we sampled the products of the following wineries:

• Beresan
• Isenhower Cellars
• Northstar
• Saviah Cellars
• Tertulia Cellars

Everywhere it was the same thing: nice Cabs, well put together Merlots, assertive Bordeaux blends. After the first couple of wineries everything started to blend together; there was very little to separate one winery's products from the next. There were a couple of standouts: the 2005 Malbec at Beresan was interesting, as was the 2005 Wild Thyme at Isenhower. But as a whole the wines, while certainly well-crafted, weren't all that distinctive.

And they were fairly expensive too; the cheapest bottle we found was, I believe, $15. Most of the offerings were in the $20 - $30 range, which didn't seem justified to me. We're not terribly price-sensitive, and probably spend a lot more on wine than the average person, but for $30/btl I expect a wine that gives me reason to take notice.

On top of the prices being a little off there were a couple of other oddities that stuck out at me as well. A lot of the wineries listed their cooperage, sometimes per wine. While somewhat interesting to the wine geek in me its not something I've encountered on marketing materials before. The scores that the wines had received from the various magazines were often prominently displayed, which led me to remark that a "92 from Wine Spectator isn't all that; they gave my mom a 92". And the grounds... a lot of the wineries still have that "new winery" smell about them. There's big, expensive buildings which still need to be paid off, which might be contributing to the high prices.

The overall impression I received is that the region is trying to establish itself as "serious". This is backed up by a conversation that I had with the associate behind the bar at Tertulia. She said that the region is only about 30 years old and that the region's winemakers are still dividing up vineyards and trying to determine what works best in the various microclimes.

I was OK with that; these things take time. If they'd asked my opinion I'd have told them to stop trying quite so hard and maybe drop their prices by $5-$7 a bottle. But then, at the last two wineries we visited, I was so unbelievably annoyed by their pretension that I had to change the title of this post.

The penultimate stop on our tour was Northstar. I was OK with the $5 tasting fee; it was a little steep, and we hadn't had to pay tasting fees at the other wineries, but not totally out of line. But I felt like their wine list was an insult to my intelligence. They wanted $40 for one of their Merlots and $60 for another, neither of which was all that exciting. And they had out some marketing dreck about how the $40 bottle had beat out a $600 French wine in a blind tasting. Like I care... all that tells me is that people pay way too fucking much for French wine. Do I look stupid? Do they really expect me to pay $60 when I can go up the road to Tertulia and get a nearly identical product for half that price?

I left Northstar in a state in extreme annoyance, which set me up nicely for Pepper Bridge. They had a sign out front that said there was a $8 tasting fee per-person. OK folks, that's unconscionable. There's absolutely no justification for charging $8 for a tasting. Remember, tasting is a marketing mechanism; you let me taste so that I'll buy your wine. That's doubly true when you're charging $50-fricking-dollars for a bottle of Cab-Sav. It seems like Pepper Bridge is trying to turn the tables; there's a sense that I should pay for the privilege of tasting their wines. Screw that.

Visit Walla Walla if you want bragging rights, or if you're interested in experiencing a "young" wine region. Don't go there if you just want to taste the wine; give them another 5 years or so to get over being full of themselves.

Olympic Peninsula Wineries

My co-conspirator and I visited some wineries on the Olympic Peninsula last weekend. As usual there was a mix of good, bad, and bloody awful. Details follow:

Olympic Cellars

The first stop on our list was Olympic Cellars, which was mediocre across the board. The people behind the counter were more interested in talking to each other than in telling us about the wines; someone should tell them that even bad wine is made better by conversation. Given the quality of their wines this is a lesson which they should take to heart.

The wine on offer at Olympic Cellars was universally disappointing. Their "Handyman Red", one of the blends from their Working Girl label, was just bad. It didn't feel balanced, didn't feel put together, didn't have much character. The wine from their premium line, La Dolce Vida, wasn't much better, but I can at least be more specific about its failings. The 2003 Syrah and the 2004 Cabernet Franc were aggressively tannic. I'm a big fan of tannic wines, but the first thing that went through my mind after tasting the Cabernet Franc was "wow, its like drinking a glass of stem".

But I may have spoken prematurely when I said that the wine was "universally" disappointing. The 2004 Merlot was decent; not great, not exceptional, but not bad either. I suspect that it might get better if you were to put a bottle away for a few years.

I'll probably not be going back; one unexceptional wine isn't enough to merit the trip.

Harbinger Winery

The next stop on the tour was Harbinger Winery, which was my favorite of the lot. Cake was playing in the background when we arrived, always a plus, and the Winemaker, Sara Gagnon, was tending the bar. She was happy to talk at length about her wines, and even came around from behind the bar and showed us some tubs where she'd been "punching down" the must earlier in the day.

In contrast with Olympic, the wines here were pretty good across the board. Here's some specifics:

• 2006 White Burgundy: This wine is aged on lees, giving it a yeasty character that I typically associate with Belgian ales. Definitely unusual, but not at all unpleasant.


• Dynamo Red: This had good flavor and nice complexity of character without being overpowering.


• 2005 Syrah: Sara said this was something of a "big brother" to the Dynamo Red. It was definitely a bolder, more powerful version of the Dynamo, but still well balanced in its assertiveness.


• 2005 Rapture: This is made using Cabernet Franc grapes from Sagemoor Farms. I'm a big fan of Cabernet Franc; if someone asked me to pick my favorite varietals it would probably top the list. The 2005 Rapture was much less peppery than what I've become accustomed to drinking primarily NY Cabernet Francs, which might be the first time I've actually been able to successfully detect regional variation on my own.


• 2005 Evolution: This Bordeaux blend was a little "corky", but was otherwise a fine wine.
  

My one criticism would be the 2006 Viognier, but I'm not much of a Viognier fan to begin with so you should take that into account. I thought it was a fine wine, but seemed a little steep at $27/bottle.

I'll definitely be going back to Harbinger in the future.

Black Diamond Winery

After Harbinger we visited Black Diamond Winery, which definitely had a little bit of a Deliverance vibe to it. It's off the beaten path, and the people tending the tasting room were vaguely creepy in an "I tan racoon hides for fun" sort of way. There's not a whole lot to say about the place; they do a bunch of fruit wines and some obscure, unassuming German whites, most of which are neither bad nor good. Their cranberry wine had a nice, tart bite and wasn't syrupy; we ended up taking a bottle of that home.

But then there's the estate grown Pinot Noir... it was bloody awful. So awful, in fact, that I was surprised that they were even selling it. It had that overcooked carrot smell that I associate with succotash, and didn't taste much better. Just to show you that wine is in the eye of the beholder, my co-conspirator thought that the Pinot Noir was pretty good. She's clearly smoking crack, so I offer her statement not for the truth contained therein, but merely for the fact that it was said.

I might go back again, but I'd make it quick and keep the car running.

Lost Mountain Winery

The last stop for the day was Lost Mountain Winery, whose big claim to fame is that they don't use sulfites in the production of their wines. The presence of sulfites (or lack thereof) doesn't really seem to have much effect on the quality of the wine, but the guy behind the bar said that wine without sulfites is less likely to induce headaches.

The wines here were mostly nice, well structured reds. None of them really jumped out at me, but they were definitely better quality than the crap we got at Olympic cellars. Their one "interesting" wine, and I use the term loosely, is their "Cellar Rat Red". Based on what I could elicit from the owner it appears that they make Cellar Rat by taking whats left over after the bottling of the other wines and pouring it into a big barrel. There doesn't seem to be any sort of quality control, they just dump everything in, resulting in a wine which can honestly be described as "chaotic". You really do feel like you're drinking 2 or 3 wines simultaneously; it makes you appreciate the time it takes to put together a good blend.

Thurston Wolfe Winery

In my previous post I wrote that Washington wineries were more serious/less friendly than their counterparts in New York. I'm going to provisionally retract that opinion on the grounds that my n may have been too low.

I recently had the opportunity to visit Thurston Wolfe Winery, which turned out to be much more like what I'm used to. I and my co-conspirator had a chance to chat with one of the proprietors, Becky Yeaman, who was knowledgeable, eager to talk about their wines, and not above dishing dirt on some of their competitors. Even better she didn't charge us a tasting fee, much less $5 a head.

But let's talk about their wines. I think overall that their selection was pretty high quality, but with one caveat that I'll get to shortly. In particular there's a few I'd like to highlight:

• 2005 Dr. Wolfe's Family Red: In NY almost all of the Finger Lakes wineries have one (or more) blended red table wines, often with cute names and/or labels, that can be had for about $9 a bottle. Some of them are good, but none of them are great, which primed us to be a little skeptical about the $15/btl asking price for the Family Red. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of this product; its been blended with care and has a nice complexity that I don't typically associate with a table wine.


• 2005 Zephyr Ridge Petite Sirah: This is a big, meaty, tannic red. Quite nice, not sure it's quite worth $20/btl, but tasty none-the-less.


• 2005 JTW Port: This, I think, was the most interesting of their offerings. I've tried quite a few ports and many of them, especially the ones typically found in supermarkets, seem to loose quite a bit of character during the fortification process. On the other hand, this particular port manages to avoid that pitfall. It has 10% r.s., but you don't really notice because you're busy actually tasting the grapes.

Now on to the bad news. There's something wrong with their Orange Muscat grapes. I tried two Orange Muscat wines, the 2006 Orange Muscat and the 2005 Sweet Rebecca, both of which had an unpleasant finishing note evocative of rubbing alcohol/cheap vodka. This taste was prominent in the Orange Muscat but masked somewhat by the sweetness of the Sweet Rebecca. I went back and tried them a second time, just to make sure I wasn't imagining things, but its definitely there in both wines.

Contrast Between New York and Washington Wine Country

L and I have recently relocated to Tacoma from Rochester, NY. Back in Rochester we spent a lot of time in the Finger Lakes wine region, doing tastings at the various wineries which line the shores of the Finger Lakes. Since moving to Tacoma we've have the opportunity to visit a couple of the Washington wine regions (Yakima and Puget Sound), and I have to say that there are some pretty stark contrasts between the NY and Washington wine experiences. If I were asked to boil the differences down to a single sentence I'd say that Washington wineries are much more serious, the results of which are a mixed bag as far as I can tell.

On the upside I have to say that the average quality of the wines I've sampled is much improved. Most of the wineries in the Finger Lakes have a substantial selection of "easy drinking" wines, table reds and whites with cute labels and (often) fairly high residual sugar. Some of them (Bully Hill comes to mind) really don't have much in the way of serious wine at all. This doesn't seem to be the case with the Washington wineries we've visited so far. Maybe our choices have been fortuitous, but it looks to me like the wine makers are, even in their low-end lines, trying to produce products with merit. So that's a plus.

On the downside there seems to be less levity; the atmosphere at the Washington wineries is more restrained in comparison to NY. I was at Novelty Hills this afternoon and saw people swishing and spitting. I don't think I've ever seen that before, not in NY and not in Missouri where I lived before NY. In Washington wine seems to be a serious business which must be approached with the due amount of respect. Even (perhaps especially) the most serious wineries in the Finger Lakes (Dr. Frank's, Silver Springs) embrace wines and wine-making with an obvious gusto and joie de vivre which doesn't mesh well with the swish-and-spit school of wine tasting.

Another contrast, and I have no idea whether this can be chalked up to the "serious factor" or if its just the way things are done in Washington, is that tasting costs a whole lot more. Most of the wineries in the Finger Lakes ask that you chip in a buck or two, whereas tastings in Washington seem to start at $5 a head. Going out and visiting some wineries on a lazy Sunday quickly becomes an expensive proposition.

I'm glad that I'm being exposed to better wine, though that's a daunting proposition in its own right. I'd thought that I'd long outgrown being intimidated by wineries and wine culture, but I feel that, in some respects, I'm starting at the bottom rung of the ladder again. It's going to take an awful lot of tasting (poor me) before I can talk knowledgeably about Washington wines in the same way that I'm able to talk about NY wines. The culture is going to take some getting used to as well.

Novelty Hill Winery

So, we happened to be up in Woodinville today for the Seattle Street of Dreams. Quite disappointing (though, that is another story.) We thought we might drown our sorrows (or sip them away) by visiting our first Puget Sound area winery.

So, we picked Novelty Hill based on curb appeal. What a tremendous amount of appeal it was, though. It may be the most beautiful winery I have every been in -- I am, however, a sucker for bare concrete with good design. Which, come to think of it, may be a good analogy for the wine. But, I am getting ahead of myself.

Pricing: The (cheap) tasting was $5 for four tastes, seven bottles to choose from (priced $18-30). There were other tastings available, but the wines seemed to top out around $40. Fifteen dollars for what equates to a glass of wine from a $30 bottle wine seems to be a great idea for the winery, but we passed on that.

Behind the Bar: The servers were polite and perfunctory. There was absolutely no chatter about wine, the winery or anything else. There was just an embarrassed look away when I asked for the "Seh-mill-on," ("or is it Seh-mill-yun?" I said. Forgive me, I was underage last time I lived in these parts. Later, when asking what kind of grape was in their late harvest (since they were pouring the wine without telling me) I learned that "Se-mee-yon" makes you sound like you know what you're doing.

In the Glass: Great bouquet on the reds. Beautiful color on the white. Lackluster performance in the glass. Maybe in 5 years, but I am not ready to be $18 on it.

Glee factor: 2 (out of 5) Glees. And that is really just because of the building. Ah... bare concrete and snake grass as landscaping.

Hogue Winery

We almost made it through the big cross country move entirely sober. However, not long after we crossed the border into Washington, we saw a sign for Hogue.

"Hogue?! Do you really think it is the Hogue?" I exclaimed.

You see, we had drunk Hogue wine before. We remembered it being very good. Most importantly, we remembered it. With vast wine tasting experience (in many cases, wine gulping experiences) in the Finger Lakes Wine Country, we were unaccustomed to stumbling upon wineries that we had ever heard of.

We stopped. We drank wine. We even bought wine.

It was a Sunday afternoon and the tasting room was bustling, but not crowded. The woman behind the counter patiently explained the difference between Genesis and the Hogue labels (the former being only sold through the tasting room). The wine was generously poured. The reds were hearty and delightful -- and seemed fairly priced at around $25/bottle. Even though it is more than we typically spend on a random bottle of wine, the Merlot seemed well worth the price. Because of our enthusiasm or luck, they invited us back for the reserve tasting--and gave us complimentary passes (normally $15/person, I think).

Rating: 5 (out of 5) Glees. Even without the free passes.