We've visited several of the Northwest's best-known areas for wines - Walla Walla, the Yakima Valley, the Willamette Valley and the Okanagan in Canada - and would like to try out someplace new this summer. Any recommendations?
With some 650 wineries in Washington alone, another 400-plus in Oregon, nearly 200 in British Columbia and more than 40 in Idaho, you have about 1,300 wineries to choose from and likely more than 10,000 wines.
And hundreds of the wineries and thousands of the wines aren't in or from the areas you mentioned. So it's not too hard to recommend some impressive areas to visit - for their wines, their restaurants and their friendly people, all of which make wine touring about as much fun as you can have and still write about it in a family-friendly publication.
That aside, here are a few places I want to return to - and if I'm lucky, I'll make it to a couple of them this summer myself.
After exploring the Okanagan, I found I wanted to try the wet side of B.C., and my wife and I chose Victoria for a trip a few years ago. I'll just say that as much fun as we've had tasting wines at the nearby wineries we visited on Vancouver Island and on the nearby Gulf Islands, especially Salt Spring, there was so much more to do that we've returned twice.
If you go, spend a day traveling to Salt Spring and visiting the three wineries there. You'll find some wines you may never have encountered - an excellent Zweigelt that Garry Oaks Winery calls Zeta and at Salt Spring Vineyards a wine dubbed Millotage made from Marechal Foch and Leon Millot grapes.
And give yourself at least a couple days to tour the nearby wineries on the big island as well. We were able to focus on enjoying our tours because we used a tour service, Vancouver Island Wine Tours, and chose not to drive ourselves, which saved both time and trouble.
In addition to the wineries, Victoria and the surrounding area offer a wide array of dining choices. Some offer simple and delicious fare, like the Tapa Bar in Trounce Alley, while others serve food as elegantly French as Brasserie L'ecole and Bon Rouge Bistro. The incomparable Sooke Harbour House is less than an hour's drive to the west.
And then of course, there's the Butchart Gardens and the Abkhazi Garden and the Royal B.C. Museum if you tire of the food and wine. As a bonus, Church and State Wines is right on the road to Butchart, and offers its "Vineyard Luncheon" Wednesday through Sunday, plus wines from both its Victoria-area and Okanagan vineyards.
But if the sophistication of Victoria just isn't your cup of tea, you might try Oregon's Umpqua Valley, which surrounds Roseberg and is home to wineries that offer a small-town, cozy ambiance for about every palate, with whites ranging from the bone-dry Spanish-style white Albarino of Abacela to the lush, lose-yourself-in-it Zinfandel of Delfino Vineyards, which also offers a cozy B&B.
Or you can stop off in Elkton at Brandborg Vineyard & Winery to sip a slightly sweet, floral, spicy Gewurztraminer or "Love Puppets" Pinot Noir, whose name speaks volumes about the wine. If you go to Brandborg, cross the street kittycorner to Tomaselli's Pastry Mill and Cafe for dinner or some of the fresh-baked bread to go with your local wine.
And if you head north from Elkton to return home, don't miss one of the Northwest's oldest wineries, Henry Estate, near Umpqua, founded in 1978 by Scott Henry. You'll find not only Oregon's signature Pinot Noir and Pinot Gris, but also a surprising Muller-Thurgau and a nice Bordeaux blend.
For wine tourists who want something that's neither city nor country, there's one of Washington's finest spots for a resort-style vacation - Lake Chelan. Featured in Wine Press Northwest's Spring 2010 edition as Winery of the Year, Vin du Lac offers a fine array of both reds and whites. Don't miss owner and winemaker Larry Lehmbecker's Cabernet Franc or his Riesling - or anything else for that matter.
The south and north shores of the lake are each home to several wineries, where you can have wines of every color from pale whites to lush reds and from every European geography from Tuscany to the Alsace.
And when you're hungry, Lake Chelan's resort roots can offer up the Italian flavors of Sorrento's Ristorante inside Tsillan Cellars, the ambiance of a country bistro in Provence at The Bistro at Vin du Lac or the white linen tablecloths of the Winemaker's Grill in Manson, which shares two doors with Wapato Point Cellars and pairs its estate wines with corn-fed Nebraska beef.
Wine words: Vin de pays
After a short absence, it's time for another French lesson. Vins de pays, literally country wines, were authorized in 1930 to allow the highly regulated French wine industry to specify the canton that a common French wine came from. A canton is simply a designated region that, depending on the country, is the equivalent of, say, a county or township.
In France, the designation on a wine label originally was to set standards, including certification that a wine contained a set level of alcohol. In the 1970s, the term began to emerge as a designation for a superior French table wine but not an AOC-designated wine (Appellation d'Origine Controllee).
And here it's worth quoting what The Sotheby's Wine Encyclopedia, fourth edition, has to say about the two designations: " ... in practice, (AOC) includes everything from the greatest French wines to the worst; thus it is almost always better to buy an expensive vin de pays than a cheap AOC wine."
Or buy Northwest. It's likely to be cheaper and better.
Ken Robertson, a newspaperman for 40 years and a Wine Press Northwest columnist since its founding, has enjoyed sipping and writing about Northwest wines for 32 years. He lives in Kennewick, Wash. Have a question for Ken? E-mail krobertson@winepressnw.com.
Print
E-Mail
