24/8/2015 Pacific Northwest ­ Expanded Guides ­ Expanded Guides ­ Guildsomm Paci뵚c Northwest Contents 1. Washington State 2. Washington East of the Cascades 3. Understanding Washington’s Vineyard Geology 4. Wine History in Washington 5. Washington Grape Varieties 6. Washington AVAs 7. Oregon 8. Oregon AVAs 9. Idaho Washington State Washington is the country’s second-largest producer of vinifera wines. While still in California’s shadow, Washington State provides 5% of the total US domestic wine output, and production continues to grow in leaps and bounds. State wine grape acreage has doubled in this century, rising from 24,000 acres in 1999 to almost 50,000 acres in 2013. In 1999, then-WA Wine Commission Director Steve Burns announced that a new winery was opening its doors every 13 days in the state, and the growth rate has sustained: by 2013 the number of state wineries had jumped from 160 to over 850. 2014 was a record harvest—227,000 tons of fruit—but with the state adding an average of 2,500 acres of vines each year over the past decade, the record likely won’t last long. For perspective, compare the entire state of Washington to California’s Napa Valley AVA: http://www.guildsomm.com/TC/learn/expanded_guides/b/expanded_guides/archive/2015/03/26/oregon 1/37 24/8/2015 Pacific Northwest ­ Expanded Guides ­ Expanded Guides ­ Guildsomm Washington has approximately 5,000 more acres of vineyard land and in 2013 produced about 40,000 more tons of fruit. And Napa Valley produces only 4% of California’s wines! Not only is Washington is a much smaller producer than California overall, but it has a narrower focus: the state lacks the giant bulk wine industry that drives California, instead placing emphasis on premium to luxury production. Washington also has a younger, less developed industry. Vineyards often comprise only a portion of a working farm’s activities, and a small minority of wineries are estate projects. Vineyard Manager Kent Waliser of Columbia Valley’s Sagemoor Vineyards puts it succinctly: “Wineries are not connected to the vineyards.” Many are even located in or around Seattle, far from the fruit itself, and most are small or medium-sized in scale, releasing fewer than 12,000 cases a year. There are, however, a few large wineries in play: Ste. Michelle Wine Estates (Chateau Ste. Michelle, Columbia Crest, etc.) is the state’s largest producer, accounting for nearly 60% of Washington’s total output, and the world’s largest producer of Riesling. Other big players making wines under their own labels include Hogue Cellars, Hedges Family Estate, K Vintners, and Gallo, which entered the WA business with its purchase of the embattled Columbia Winery in 2012. In 2013, each of these brands sold at least 250,000 gallons, equivalent to more than 100,000 cases of wine. In the same year, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates alone sold over 7 million cases. These few large wineries—and parent corporations like Precept Wines (Canoe Ridge, Waterbrook, Willow Crest)—are the driving forces behind Washington’s current growth. BACK TO TOP WASHINGTON EAST OF THE CASCADES Water is the limiting thing. -Mike Sauer, Red Willow Vineyard Most of Washington’s vinifera vineyards are located east of the Cascade Mountains within the broad Columbia Basin, the watershed of the Columbia River. These central and eastern winegrowing regions, which all lie at or above the 46th parallel, share a fairly uniform, arid continental climate, with minor variations from region to region. The region's hot summers—in which average afternoon temperatures can hit 103° F—and additional hours of summer http://www.guildsomm.com/TC/learn/expanded_guides/b/expanded_guides/archive/2015/03/26/oregon 2/37 24/8/2015 Pacific Northwest ­ Expanded Guides ­ Expanded Guides ­ Guildsomm sunshine promote rapid sugar ripening, while cool nights preserve acid. The average diurnal variation in Columbia Valley is 28° F, but in some low areas nighttime temperatures can drop by 40° F or more. Frigid winters serve to mitigate disease pressures, as many vineyard pests simply cannot survive the cold. Phylloxera, for example, is virtually unknown in the state, kept at bay by the severe winters, inhospitable sandy soils, and the great physical distances from one vineyard to the next. And with annual rainfall hovering in the 6- to 12-inch range, eastern Washington’s dry climate naturally suppresses mildews and other fungal infestations. Winter and the dry climate may stymie pests, but they present their own challenges, too. Despite reasonably abundant irrigation water, water rights can be very difficult for growers to acquire, while dry- farming in most parts of arid eastern Washington is a physical impossibility. Why is rainfall so scarce in eastern Washington? As Pacific air hits the Cascade Range it is pushed upward, cooled, and condensed into clouds, which quickly unleash their moisture as precipitation. This creates a rain shadow effect for the Columbia River Basin in eastern Washington—the western slopes of the Cascades receive over 80 inches of rainfall annually, yet 50 miles to the east the climate is suddenly desert-like. Yakima Valley, near the eastern foothills of the Cascades, receives 1/10th of the rainfall poured on those western slopes. The Cascades are also responsible for the Columbia Basin’s continental climate, as they block the moderating maritime air from moving further inland. However, winters are not as absolutely bone-chilling as they are further inland: the Rockies to the north and east of the Columbia Basin shelter the region from icy polar air masses. It’s cold—but the vines can survive if the grower is vigilant and the vineyard is situated appropriately. Timing is a critical factor, too: if temperatures plunge too soon, before vines have hardened for the winter, the cold can be much more damaging. Elevation and aspect play a big role in mitigating cold and maximizing sunlight. In south-central Washington, the low-lying topography of the Columbia Basin is striated by east-west ridgelines— an area known to geologists as the Yakima Fold Belt, encompassing much of Washington’s vineyard acreage. The ridgelines, or anticlines, can rise to 4,000 ft. while the valley floors (synclines) between them rarely exceed 1,000 ft. above sea level. The formations are the result of tectonic compression during the Miocene Epoch: over time, the anticlines folded upward and the synclines buckled between them as the earth’s crust compressed. For a time, ancestral rivers pushed through the rising anticlines, carving water gaps, until their paths were redirected. Today, these anticlinal ridges, pierced by eroded water gaps, constrict airflow and produce a temperature inversion layer as cool air bottlenecks within the syncline basins, unable to escape. Valley floors, such as those in Yakima Valley and Walla Walla Valley, therefore tend to have greater frost pressure, wider diurnal temperature variations, and lower wintertime temperatures. A move upward in elevation, past the 1,000-foot mark, has given vineyards a chance to go the distance—growing degree-day, temperature, and frost-free day averages all http://www.guildsomm.com/TC/learn/expanded_guides/b/expanded_guides/archive/2015/03/26/oregon 3/37 24/8/2015 Pacific Northwest ­ Expanded Guides ­ Expanded Guides ­ Guildsomm typically increase with elevation in eastern Washington. Aspect compounds its significance: those vineyards on the south side of anticlinal ridges in AVAs like Red Mountain, Wahluke Slope and Horse Heaven Hills are the warmest, and the recipients of the most sunshine, in all of Washington. Surviving the Winter Vines find shelter from the worst frosts and freezes at higher elevations, while viticultural techniques like dual-trunk training and buried canes also serve as “insurance” in the most brutal winters. If a vine’s canopy dies during a cold snap, own-rooted vines can grow anew but a year’s harvest will be lost. Dual-trunk training and buried canes both mitigate such losses and can potentially give growers uninterrupted harvests. With dual-trunk training, used throughout Washington, growers train two separate trunks on the same vine in parallel, just an inch or two apart, from the ground up. According to winemaker Brian McCormick of Memaloose, “statistically, you can get winter damage to one but not the other, even though they are growing in the same spot.” Vines are particularly susceptible to severe crown gall affliction after a hard freeze—with two trunks one’s chances of losing an entire vine canopy is halved. Alternatively, growers may bury fruiting canes over winter in the soil. If the canopy dies over winter, the grower can pull the fruiting cane up from under the soil and still get a crop the following year. This technique is typically employed with low-trained cordon vines. These training techniques, coupled with the move to higher elevation and post-harvest irrigation, steel Washington’s vinifera vineyards and wine industry through the long winter. http://www.guildsomm.com/TC/learn/expanded_guides/b/expanded_guides/archive/2015/03/26/oregon 4/37 24/8/2015 Pacific Northwest ­ Expanded Guides ­ Expanded Guides ­ Guildsomm Red Willow Vineyard, Yakima Valley AVA. BACK TO TOP FIRE AND WATER: UNDERSTANDING WASHINGTON’S VINEYARD GEOLOGY Two major geologic forces have shaped the bedrock material throughout the entire Columbia Basin: a period of frequent and powerful volcanic eruptions occurring millions of years ago, and the much more recent Missoula Floods. First, the volcanoes: from 17 to six million years ago, during the Miocene Epoch, hundreds of basalt lava flows poured forth from fissures throughout eastern Washington and western Idaho, blanketing a 65,000-acre area spanning both states and northern Oregon. The total volume of the period’s volcanic eruption surpassed 700 cubic miles —the largest such flows ever documented—and the ground beneath it sunk under the basalt’s weight.