I remember the first time I drove through Walla Walla. It was in the early ’70s as my family headed to Sun Valley, Idaho, for a ski vacation. At that time, the only thing remarkable about Walla Walla, to me, was the fact that it was home to a state penitentiary. Our tour guide — my dad — pointed this out to my sisters and me as he steered our station wagon through the sleepy town. It would be decades before I gave Walla Walla another thought.
In the early 2000s, I was working as a sales rep for a small distributor in Twinsburg, Ohio. The owner of EuroVin Imports had an excellent portfolio of imports, but his domestic book left a lot to be desired. He was determined to find wineries from California to flesh out his portfolio until I suggested he look to Washington state instead. I was more than a little surprised when he took my advice and flew off to Seattle to attend Taste Washington, the nation’s largest single-region wine and food festival. When he returned, the skip in his step said it all: Washington wines were a winner.
Cadence was one of the wineries that signed on with EuroVin. I can recall working the market with Ben Smith, owner and winemaker for Cadence, and the delight on buyers’ faces as Smith poured his magnificent reds from Red Mountain. I must admit to feeling pretty cool back then, too, because here I was, a Washington native, promoting wines from the motherland — I was so proud of my home state.
It wasn’t until my job as a wine buyer that I made it back to Walla Walla and boy-o-boy, things had changed, a lot. No more tumbleweeds blowing across empty streets or remarks about the penitentiary. This was wine Nirvana, and I was in love.
For three days, I sipped on some of the best wines I’ve ever had and visited places of such natural beauty — Hedges, Abeja, Reininger, just to name a few. The backdrop to this visit was the lingering days of summer with intense hues of gold and endless blue skies. I didn’t want to leave.
In honor of Washington Wine Month, I am focusing on reds from two of Washington’s unique growing regions. The first two wines I selected are often my go-to reds and are widely available locally. First off was the 2021 Bookwalter Cellars Notebook Red Blend ($10.99). This very affordable blend of mostly Cabernet over-delivers for the price and features notes of dark chocolate-covered cherries and wild blackberries — a true crowd-pleasing style of wine.
Another of my go-to reds is the 2021 Lone Birch Cabernet Sauvignon ($14.99). In contrast to the Notebook blend, this wine has more toasty oak nuances that dominate the palate in the form of espresso and chocolate. If you like oaky reds, this is a sure bet.
As a nod to the growing number of wineries cropping up in Washington each month, I made my next selections based on the fact that I had never tried them. My first random pick was the 2021 CasaSmith Cinghiale Sangiovese ($23.99, Haggen) and I chose this wine because of the shelf-talker heralding a 92-point score. I liked this wine but didn’t feel it lived up to its score, which is precisely why rating wines is a tricky business. That being said, I did enjoy the tangy aromatics that led to flavors of smoky paprika, oregano, red plums and currants. A big bowl of pasta puttanesca would absolutely bring this wine to life and make your meal sing.
The final wine I tried was the 2019 Next Columbia Valley Red Blend ($18.99, Haggen). What impressed me most about this wine were the precise jammy notes of raspberry and blueberry. Too often, “jammy” reds can be high in alcohol and taste muddled — this was not the case here. The bright acids enhanced the fruit jam to perfection, and I’ll be buying this wine again.
With more than 1,050 licensed wineries in Washington, there is something for everybody. Whether it’s an affordable go-to red or a high-end splurge, the Motherland will provide and make you proud.
Katie Bechkowiak owned Vinostrology wine bar in downtown Bellingham from 2013–19. If you have wine suggestions for her monthly column, contact vinostrology@gmail.com.
