Three Days in Walla Walla

Posted 01/27/2008 at 11:04 AM by Chris

A while ago I was in Walla Walla, watching the sun setting from my window in the 80-year-old Marcus Whitman Hotel in the center of downtown. Up to this point, my only impression of this city was the funny name I remember from cartoons as a kid. I had just completed a three-day intensive sommelier immersion event dubbed “Walla Walla University,” and I came away with fond memories and a new understanding of Washington State’s unassuming AVA.

The Walla Walla Valley is 20 x 20 square miles of dry desert land in the Southeast corner of the state, and actually encompasses both Oregon and Washington. It is physically the size of Napa Valley, but only has roughly 1,200 acres of vineyards planted, in comparison with more than 33,000 in the Napa Valley. The wine industry here is surprisingly very young. If you move past the sporadic pre-prohibition Italian families producing wine, you will meet Gary Figgins, who is acknowledged as the first to officially start commercial wine production with his 1978 vintage of Cabernet Sauvignon from the Walla Wally Valley. Just three years later in 1981, Rick Small started Woodward Canyon Winery. Now with nearly 30 years of wine production, Walla Walla is experiencing a major growth spurt both in vineyard development and of newly bonded wineries. The AVA, created in 1984, is dominated by over 75 small, family owned, low production wineries and produces just four percent of Washington’s wine.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the winemakers were eager to share information and education among each other without competitive, altruistic and selfish attitudes. Newcomers to the wine business are welcomed and encouraged in the name of promoting the region. Recent arrivals like Master Sommelier Greg Harrington from New York City packed up his belongings with his wife and left their cardboard box apartment to start a new life in this arid, wide-open land. Greg recently launched his brand, Gramercy Cellars, and his first release of Syrah is an impressive, dark and complex version, calling to mind the Syrah of St. Joseph in the Northern Rhone. Greg was encouraged and helped along by Walla Walla vintners like the renegade Christophe Baron of Cayuse, Chris Figgins of Leonetti Cellars, Jean-Francois Pellet of Pepper Bridge and farmers like Tom Waliser of Beresan Winery and Chris Banek of Seven Hills Vineyard. I was impressed by brands I had previously never heard of, like the concentrated intensity of Va Piano Cellars, Reininger Winery and Amavi Cellars. Established wineries like Leonetti, L’Ecole 41 and Woodward Canyon showed consistency, with high quality, old vine examples of Cabernet and specifically with proprietary Bordeaux blends.

Walla Walla has gained a reputation for quality red wines, particularly Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. As you walk the vineyards, you find your shoes covered in very fine ash grey, silt and sand, called Loess. It was deposited here 12,000 years ago in the spectacular Missoula Flood, which covered the Pacific Northwest in melted ice age glacial water and created the unique and diverse soils that influence the wines of the Willamette Valley, as well as Washington. It is in fact a dry, arid desert climate, susceptible to intense heat in the day, very cold temperatures at night and Arctic air creating frosts that can decimate an entire year’s crop. Precisely the reason large, corporate wineries have very minor interests in growing grapes here, due to the large financial losses that can occur at least once every 10 years on average. However, Walla Walla’s soil and climate contribute in producing balanced, distinctive and world class examples of Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah that are truly impressive.

I should end on a final culinary note. On this final day, I was in desperate need of a good burger and a beer after many gourmet dinners and fancy wines. Thankfully Ron Coleman of Tamarack Cellars just happens to own an incredible 60-year-old throwback burger shack called the “Ice-Burg.” Here you will find thick, creamy milkshakes and malts with your choice of flavors as diverse as coconut, butterscotch, blackberry and peanut butter. While they do not serve beer, the menu offered a “scotch and soda” along with root beer, lemonade and diet coke. The double cheeseburger was a godsend this afternoon. Piled high with lettuce, tomato, two beef patties and two slices of cheese, it was probably the best meal I have had in the last few weeks. As is the requirement in St. Helena to have a burger and shake at Taylor’s Refresher, so is the necessity for a visit to the Ice Burg.

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