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.