Woodinville Wine Coutnry

One of the realities of farming, whether it's produce or wine grapes, is that crops are usually grown away from the population centers that consume them. This normally isn't a big problem since one can always truck the product from farm to consumer (although faithful readers will recall that I'm a big proponent of eating and drinking as locally as possible). However, in the case of eastern Washington wineries that want to make connections with their potential customers and have people try their wines, it was difficult to get folks from the Seattle area to drive several hundred miles to visit the wineries and tasting rooms. The solution - if the consumers won't go to the wineries, bring the wineries to the consumers. This is exactly what has happened in Woodinville.

Rachel and I had planned a trip up to the Woodinville area a few years ago, but ended up not being able to go. This year, Tim was going to be swimming at the age group sectionals in Federal Way during the weekend of March 20th, so even though he didn't particularly want his parents with him, we figured it was as good a time as any to drive up for wine tasting. Actually, Tim posted a Facebook status from the meet that read something like "I'm at the swim meet and my parents are 100 miles away - life is good." Rachel popped his bubble by replying that we were actually only 36 miles away!

Chateau Ste. Michelle was the first winery to set up shop in Woodinville when they built the french-style chateau in 1976. All of the grapes for the winery were trucked in from various vineyards in eastern Washington. As the US wine industry started growing in the 70s and 80s, many other wineries and vineyards were established in the Yakima Valley and near Walla Walla. Many of these wineries made great wine, but didn't get a lot of traffic through their tasting rooms. As wine tourism has become more important, both older wineries as well as folks looking to get into the industry looked to Chateau Ste. Michelle's example and started moving into Woodinville. The result is an amazingly strange situation where you have industrial parks in the city full of tasting rooms and small working wineries along with small independent tasting rooms and several larger stand-alone wineries such as Ste. Michelle and Columbia. The strangest thing about them is the lack of vineyards. With very few exceptions, the wine is either made in eastern Washington and brought to the tasting rooms, or the grapes themselves are trucked from the vineyards to the wineries in Woodinville.

Saturday

We left home early on Saturday morning so that we'd arrive in time to get a full day of tasting in. It's a loooong drive up I-5, but after stopping at the pool in Federal Way to drop off a forgotten item to one of the swim team members, we arrived in Woodinville. After getting confused the first time we went through the newly build rotaries in town and failing to find anyplace that looked good for lunch, we were a tad disappointed. We first stopped at Columbia Winery because they had a sign out that they were serving flatbread. Upon entering, they didn't seem to have any restrooms, and no one seemed willing to tell us where we could get the flatbread. We left, disgusted. Now, let me just say that although some people get crabby when they're hungry, this has never been a problem for me. What? Disagreement? OK, I was crabby. We ended up eating at Quizno's (yuk, but at least it was food) and felt better afterwords.

Our first real wine tasting stop was Northwest Totem Cellars. They are a small Mom and Pop winery that produces about 2000 cases a year. Both their winery and "tasting room" are actually part of their house, and it was obvious that they made do with what they had - next to the house were large plastic fermentation tanks that had been outfitted with window air conditioners to keep the temperature down on the must inside the tanks. Pretty clever. We were warmly greeted inside the house and tasted through 6 wines. They were not bad, but nothing special - well made, but simple.

Next, it was off to one of Woodinville's warehouse districts. As I mentioned above, many wineries have their tasting rooms (and sometimes the wineries themselves) in these industrial parks, so you drive in past little electronics companies and auto body shops and find all these tasting rooms. We spent most of the afternoon here and visited the following wineries:

Hestia (decent wine, nothing special)
Stevens (OK, would have been better with food)
Baer (very disappointing)
Red Sky (very nice Bordeaux blends)
Cuillin Hills (very good Syrah)
Smasne/Gard/Alma Terra (more wines than you've ever seen in one place along with food. Mostly very good wine, including a nice Carmenere. We also got to taste a collection of 3 Syrahs grown in 3 vineyards with very different climates but vinified using exactly the same process by the same winemaker. The differences were amazing.)

After Smasne, our palates were shot so we headed for the motel. We stayed at the Comfort Inn in nearby Kirkland. It was nothing special but was clean, quiet and relatively inexpensive. We relaxed for about an hour and watched part of a Mariners game on the TV. We really didn't feel like going anywhere fancy, so we walked across the parking lot to Pizza Hut. While we generally go for fancy high-end food, Pizza Hut has a special place in our hearts from our days working at Zenith in Michigan when our team would go out to lunch at Pizza Hut at least once a week. That was a long time ago, and for the past 10 or 15 years, every Pizza Hut we've been to anywhere in the country has been understaffed and the service was just awful. Sadly, this was no exception and while we were able to get our food in a reasonable amount of time, they wouldn't bring the check and then wouldn't come back to collect the money. We finally decided that we had enough cash to pay, and just left it on the table and walked out.

Sunday

I'd been getting over a nasty cold before we drove up, but fortunately I was able to taste. Unfortunately when I woke up on Sunday morning, my ears were congested and I was having trouble hearing anything. What? After breakfast, we prepared to head out for another full day of wine tasting. Most Woodinville wineries don't open until noon, although a few open at 11:00 and the Woodinville Wineries Association's website said that Chateau Ste. Michelle and Columbia opened at 10:00. So, after sitting around the motel reading for a while, we decided we'd head out to the early openers. We arrived at Chateau Ste. Michelle around 10:30, and drove through the one open gate at the head of the driveway. There didn't appear to be anyone around, and when we tried the tasting room door, it was locked. So much for an early start. We drove around a little to see where some of the other wineries were until 11:00 when a few more wineries were open.

Our first stop was Januik/Novelty Hill, a large modern winery with a great tasting room. We tasted through 14 different wines from the 2 labels, most of which were quite good. Our next stop was Brian Carter Cellars whose tasting room is housed in a cute little cottage near the center of town. They had an eclectic collection of wines that included a super-Tuscan, a Spanish blend, a Rhone blend and a Bordeaux blend. The wine was OK, but not great. We then headed across the street to a small yellow house where Hollywood Hill has their tasting room. They specialize in Rhone-style wines, and had some very nice Viognier and Syrah. A quick trip around the rotary (I was getting good at it by now) brought us to DeLille tasting room. They had some of the best wine we tasted on this trip with some great Rhone and Bordeaux varietal wines.

We were determined to have better food today than yesterday, so we had lunch at the Purple Café and Wine Bar. I had a very nice lamb pasta dish along with a glass of Cote du Rhone. The food was quite good and it sure beat Quizno's.

After lunch we went to Mark Ryan Cellars just across the rotary from the restaurant. Interestingly, he had a Pinot Noir made from Lachini fruit that tasted like it came from Calkins Lane. He also had a lot of pretty good warm climate blends, but nothing knocked our socks off. We then headed back to the warehouse district to catch a few more wineries that we didn't get to on Saturday. Our first stop was Guardian where they were having a release party for one of their wines. I've never seen so many brand-new oak barrels at a small winery and the wine tasted mostly of oak and alcohol - not good. We then stopped at William Church where the wine was overly tannic and pretty disappointing. The weather wasn't nearly as nice as it had been yesterday, so we decided not to spend any more time walking around the warehouse district and drove to DiStefano where they were barrel tasting some of their Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine was OK and it was interesting to hear how the winemaker approaches his blending program. All in all, a successful morning of tasting, but the afternoon was somewhat disappointing.

We headed back to the motel for a bit of rest before dinner, then drove back into Woodinville for our dinner at Barking Frog restaurant at the Willows Lodge. We ordered a bottle of Antinori Chianti Classico to go with dinner. We also ordered way too much food, starting with our appetizers - seared fois gras and sous vide porke belly. We then each had a salad (roasted beet salad and crab Timbale). The portions were too large and by the time the main courses arrived, we were already getting full. Had had a pretty nice lamb and pasta dish (wait, didn't I have that for lunch too?), and Rachel had duck breast with Huckleberry Risotto, Cipollini Onions, Wild Mushrooms, and Duck Confit. We had desert too (along with a glass of Port for me) and had to be rolled out. Rachel drove back to the motel. The food was quite good, but not spectacular. There were flaws with some of the dishes - the crab was too sweet, the pork belly was somewhat dry, and the portions were just too big.

Monday

Our first stop on Monday was Chateau Ste. Michelle. We signed up for the free tour where we went though the winery while hearing some of the history behind it. Chateau Ste. Michelle is the largest producer of Riesling in the country and it's all made in Woodinville along with their other whites. The red wines are made in a separate facility in eastern Washington closer to the vineyards. At the end of the tour we tasted a few of their mass-produced wines which weren't too bad. We had also signed up for a reserve tasting that we would come back for in about 40 minutes. In the mean time, we popped across the street to give Columbia another try. They weren't so crowded this time (and we weren't starving either) and had a pleasant enough experience tasting through about 10 of their wines. They were all OK, but pretty pedestrian. We then went back over to CSM and walked around their grounds for a while until it was time for our tasting.

The tasting itself was in a nice space off the main lobby where we sat down at a long table. We tried a sparkling wine, 06 Ethos Chardonnay, 06 Canoe Ridge Syrah, 06 Ethos Syrah, and the 06 Ethos Cab. All were very good, and extremely good values.

After CSM, we stopped for lunch at the Red Hook Brewery which is between Columbia Winery and the Willows Lodge. Pretty typical pub fare - I had a bacon cheeseburger and a pint of porter. We ended up sucking our lunch down very fast so that we could catch the brewery tour that was leaving about 8 minutes after we got our food. The tour was OK, but mostly geared for the 20-something Newport crowd. I didn't particularly care for most of the beers they sampled either.

After the tour, we decided we had time and palate for a few more wineries before heading home. We first stopped at Silver Lake winery where we had micro-pours of mediocre wine. We then went back to the little strip mall where the Quizno's and Purple Café were to visit a couple more small tasting rooms - Gifford Hirlinger (a very nice small family winery with pretty good wine) and Dusted Valley (another small family winery with very nice wines).

By then we'd had enough and started the long drive back home. The traffic was pretty bad south of Seattle, but we were able to use the carpool lane for some of it. Once we cleared Tacoma, it was pretty smooth driving, just a long way. We had go-fever and drove straight home.

It was a very fun weekend, and there were even some pretty good wines. Again we were reminded that you need to go through a lot of so-so wine to find the good stuff. I'd go again, but not until we've visited some of the other nearby wine regions like Walla Walla and the Rogue Valley.