After years of promise, the wines of Washington and Oregon are winning prizes and praise. Gerald Asher, wine writer for Gourmet Magazine, calls Washington’s merlots and Cabernets “really rather splendid.” Oregon’s pinot noirs, which first attracted attention a decade ago, used to be inconsistent, says Asher. “But in the last couple of years, Oregon has been producing some red wines which are extraordinary,” he says. A 1992 King Estate Reserve pinot gris from Oregon just received a five-star rating in Restaurant Wine, a publication that advises restaurants on wine. The honor is particularly sweet since the magazine is based in Napa, Calif., the nation’s premier wine region. “Some Northwest wines are as good as the best from California,” says publisher Ronn Wiegand.
That’s the kind of compliment that makes Northwest wine boosters wince. “These wines are too good, too distinctive, to stand in California’s shadow,” says Paul Gregutt, coauthor of a new guidebook, “Northwest Wines.” “We can play with the big boys.”
Not too big-the Northwest’s $300 million wine industry is still dwarfed by California’s $7.2 billion business. Washington and Oregon don’t even try to compete with California’s copious jug wines. “The Northwest’s niche is premium wines at competitive prices,” says Wiegand. Wine is cheaper to produce in the Northwest in part because land is so much cheaper-up to $10,000 an acre for the best sites, compared with a high of $50,000 in California. Growers in California have also been fighting a root-eating pest since 1988, ripping up vineyards and replanting at a cost of up to $50,000 an acre. So an excellent merlot from Washington may sell for $11, about $4 less than a wine of similar quality from the Napa Valley.
But Northwest vintners believe their edge is flavor as much as price. Wade Wolfe, general manager of Hogue Cellars in Prosser, Wash., says the strong sun gets Washington grapes riper than a lot of European ones, and the nights are colder than California’s. The result is often a “crisper, fresher” wine. “And you don’t have to age it for 20 years to be drinkable,” he says. If the next two decades are as successful as the last, the Northwest could become as famous for Cabernets as it is for cappuccino.
