Northern Exposure

Life is Much too Short to Drink Bad Wine” -- anonymous

I’ve written before about how Oregon produces lots of really good wines – at really high prices.  That’s great—for tourism and for boosting Oregon’s economy.  But that isn’t so great for those of us trying to stay within a wine budget.  Increasingly, the twin desire for quality and reasonable price is forcing us to look farther afield—to California and Washington.

I’ve written about California wines quite a bit in the past, but I recently realized that while I’ve been writing about Californians, I’ve been drinking Washington wines.  It wasn’t really a conscious decision; it’s just that I’ve discovered so many new, affordable, delicious favorites recently that all seem to hail from Washington.

That probably isn’t an accident.  Washington has been coming on recently as a wine region.  Relatively young as wine regions go (large plantings of high-quality grapes began in the 1960s), Washington started producing some world-class wines in the 1980s and 1990s.  But it was not until the early 2000s that Washington wines were really made in quantities large enough to be distributed widely outside the state.  In 1996, only 34,000 tons of grapes were harvested in Washington.  By 2001, that number was 100,000 tons.

As the industry has grown—along with its national reputation—so has the knowledge of the growers and makers, who, through experimentation, have determined which locations are the best places to plant various varietals (types of grapes) and which viticulture (growing/farming of grapes) and viniculture (winemaking) techniques will work best on each grape. 

All that experimentation has already paid off beautifully for those of us who love variety, quality and economy in our wine!