Before I write about a day spent tasting in Yakima Valley, I have to offer a disclaimer. With very few exceptions, all of the wineries in Yakima Valley are really good. If you haven’t done much tasting or you just want to enjoy a bottle of wine in wine country on a sunny day, the stretch of highway from Yakima to the Tri-Cities has a lot to offer and you should get out there. Just be sure to do it soon–like every wine region, Yakima Valley is getting to the point where you no longer get to meet the winemakers or the winery owners and you have to pay tasting fees. If I sound a little harsh in some of my comments below, it’s because I have really high standards and because I’ve been tasting wines in Yakima Valley for years already, not because the wineries are bad. Also, they’re selling their wines at ultra-premium prices, so I’m holding them to an ultra-premium standard.
If you’re looking for someplace to enjoy a bottle of wine surrounded by beautiful scenery, our first stop, Steppe Cellars, is perfect. The winery is down a long, winding dirt road next to some sort of private lakes estate or farm. It’s surrounded by orchards and has a great view of the valley. Sort of like Silver Lake in Zillah or Maryhill outside of Hood River, this would be a great place to hang out on a sunny day.
The wine was intriguing. Steppe’s a brand new winery, just now in their second season. Their winemaker is a German woman whose family has been in the business of making wine for 400 years. They were pouring a pinot noir made from grapes grown in Yakima Valley. That’s a rarity and will continue to be even rarer. 2005 was the only year the winemaker felt produced fruit good enough to make a pinot noir. Yakima Valley is simply too hot for this grape in any normal year. They were also pouring a syrah that was just about to go into the bottle. It showed great promise, and as with any new winery, the price was very reasonable. I’m planning on buying a bottle and will have more detailed tasting notes later.
Of all the wineries we visited (Kestrel, Alexandria Nicole, Desert Wind, Steppe, Teftt, and Yakima Cellars), Kestrel poured the best wine of the day – a 2003 Old Vine Merlot. “Old vine” in this context means 30 years old. I didn’t take the best of notes, but trust me–it’s really good. However, it’s also $50, which struck me as too expensive for this wine.
How to feel about Alexandria Nicole comes down to a single question: do you like barnyard? If you do, this is a great winery. We tasted a wide variety of wines here, including a grenache, lemberger, a couple of blends and a cab sauv. It’s the single Bourdeaux and Rhone varietals that have the strongest barnyard flavor. When we stopped here last summer, we experienced the same thing at C.R. Sandidge, Alexandria Nicole and Kestrel – both the syrah and the cab sauv tended to have a really strong barnyard flavor. My wife loved it. I’m not a fan. The other wines at Alexandria Nicole were inoffensive. The lemberger was exactly what you’d expect – very light, very fruity, somewhat peppery, extremely easy to drink. I was less impressed with their reserve Bordeaux blends, which were non-descript, especially in comparison to the 2002 Terra Blanca Onyx from the night before.
Desert Wind is a remarkable facility–a brand new (actually, still under construction), 30,000+ square foot wine and culinary complex. I hope they can keep it booked, because the fixed costs have to be astronomical. The wine here wasn’t bad, though, and it was certainly worth the price ($12-15 a bottle). I’m going to consider picking up a few bottles locally as everyday wine, but I don’t think they mean for their wines to be anything but part of the draw for the larger facility.
Teftt was a stop we probably shouldn’t have made. It is an old school Yakima winery. It’s run out of what looks and feels and in all probability is the winemakers’ house. The wines are so-so and all over the place–a zinfandel, a merlot, a blend and a vinsanto (vinsanto?) all shared the same counter. It was crowded, with two tour buses showing up while we were there. We had a hard time getting a pour, so we did one taste and headed out.
Yakima Cellars (not to be confused with Yakima River Winery) also proved to be a disappointment. They’re under new ownership, and even though the winemaker is supposedly the same as before, the wine was not nearly as good as I remembered it being before. They’re specializing in sangiovese, and I’ve kind of come to the conclusion that the varietal doesn’t stand on its own, neither in Tuscany nor in Washington State. I know a lot of people would disagree with me (including my own wife).
All in all, it was a bit of a disappointing day. We only bought one bottle of wine – the Steppe pinot noir (and that mostly for the novelty factor). All the prices seemed high. All the wine seemed merely OK or good. Maybe it was because it was “Wine and Chocolate” weekend out here and they figured big groups would be willing to part with their money.
Or maybe it was just because that’s how things are in Yakima Valley. I’ve remarked elsewhere on the paradox of Yakima Valley – the best grapes in the state are grown here, but the best wines are produced in Walla Walla and Woodinville. Call it the curse of the w’s. I can name several wineries in Walla Walla I would visit in a heartbeat (Abeja, Buty, Isenhower, Three Rivers and L’Ecole all spring to mind; and even Cougar Crest and Tamarack, both of which I wasn’t initially impressed with a couple of years ago, are producing really excellent wine). I can do the same for Woodinvile (JM, DeLille, Januik, Kennedy Shah). For Yakima Valley, there’s not necessarily any single winery I would automatically go back to (with the possible exception of Cote Bonneville, but they’re by appointment only). At the same time, I can easily name a handful of vineyards from Yakima Valley that I immediately relate to great wine: DuBrul (which produces fruit for the best wine I’ve ever had), Ciel du Cheval, Klipsun, Champoux and Tapteil.
Maybe it’s the proximity to Seattle and the Tri-Cities: maybe Yakima doesn’t have to try that hard to move bottles. Maybe it’s the proliferation of vineyard-wineries: maybe you can’t grow great fruit and make great wine at the same time. I don’t know, but I wish there were more I could get excited about after this trip. In the meantime, prices are going up, as are tasting fees. It’s definitely not the undiscovered paradise of wine it was prior to 2000.
