An Adventure in the Pacific Northwest

After my sister Mary picked me up at my bus stop at a dark, cold Shell Station in Anacortes, WA, last Thursday night, we went straight to the local wine shop. It is the first time my sister and I have spent any time together since her wedding last December, and I am here for an impromptu quiet weekend in her cabin to study, cook, read, and bond. We pick up two bottles of wine at the store, just in case.

Four hours later, we had long ago demolished the Columbia Valley Riesling with our take-out Thai and were polishing off the bottle of Sonoma County Old Vine Zin, an ode to our childhood—no notes on these, folks; I was off-duty—when Mary has a brilliant idea.

“Hey, Al-Pal! Let’s go wine tasting tomorrow!”

“Great! I’ve never been to Washington wine country before!”

“Perfect! Right after we go for a run!”

“Yay! Oh, wait, um…ok…”

The next morning I am gasping for breath as we gallop over hills of damp earth, past cobalt waters through tangles of giant trees, dodging boulders and attempting to soak up the glory of the Pacific Northwest. I like fitness. I have a daily yoga practice. I swim laps. I don’t run. My head hurts. My lungs hurt.

“Isn’t this great?” yells Mary, full-steam ahead.

“Woohoo,” is all I can manage.

Freshly showered ready to go, the sin that was that second bottle of Zin is catching up to me. As my mother would say, crime does not pay. Compounded by that inhumane trail run, I’m not feeling quite so skipper. We’ve decided to venture to the closest winery, Mount Baker Vineyards, nestled in the foothills of Mt. Baker itself, about an hour away in Everson. Due to the fact that it’s well past 2pm, this is going to be one-stop-shopping wine tasting, assuming we make it there on time.

“Maybe we could just find a regional tasting room in town somewhere,” I suggest. “Are you sure you want to drive all the way out there? Are you sure you want to wine taste at all?”

She’s sure.

We arrive at Mount Baker Vineyards 15 minutes to close. There are no guests there. The man behind the bar gives us the ‘you’ve got to be kidding me’ look.

“We’re not too late for a quick tasting, are we?” Mary asks in her most charming voice, smile spread across her gorgeous face.

“No, no, of course not, come sit down.”

An hour later we are still sitting there, discussing sixth sense experiences while I am scribbling tasting notes on an extra wine list, my hangover dissipated. The hospitality we found is that distinct northern style I associate with New England: warm but unaffected, generous but not because they have to be. Bill is a local man who spends his days off hiking Mt. Baker and snapping landscape photographs that are worthy of a frame. He knows the history of the winery and the vineyards and while he didn’t offer a lot of technical wine jabber, he was willing and able to humor me when I asked about barrels and aging and harvest. Mount Baker Vineyards produces 12,000 cases annually and, as is my custom, we declined to select wines off the 21 wine tasting menu (9 whites, 11 reds, 1 dessert, all from Yakima Valley), asking Bill to lead the way.

He started us on a Limited Release Viognier 2008, which was a bit unbalanced and heavy on the booze factor, followed by a Barrel Select Chardonnay 2008. It never became entirely clear to me what “Barrel Select” means, but I stopped caring after tasting this Chardonnay. Bill told me that 99% of people who visit Mount Baker Vineyards say they do not care for Chardonnay, which surprised me greatly. I know Chard has fallen out of fashion a bit due to overuse of oak, but 99%? In rural Washington? Nonetheless, this figure has inspired the winery to produce a Chardonnay in the French fashion to please the people, and it works. The wine is incredibly mellow on the nose, a soft apple custard. The palate is more tropical than anything else with pineapple and citrus notes. With a small amount of residual sugar (.5%), solid acidity, and balanced alcohol at 13.7%, Mary and I were loving it. Mary likes to talk about malolactic fermentation, being a science dork and all, and Bill was happy to inform us that the Chardonnay did not in fact undergo ML and saw very little oak during fermentation. The wine reminded me of a surfer boy, shaggy blonde hair brushing a freckled brow, feet planted in the sand next to a tall glass of lemonade, skin smooth with sunscreen and sea salt. Easy and affable, he plucks a slow version of a classic melody on an old guitar. He reads Faulkner and cooks French cuisine on his time off. He’s not what you’d expect and you find yourself both impressed and unintimidated by his laid-back manner. Naturally, Mary and I each took one home.

We went on to taste a Barrel Select Pinot Gris 2007, which was quite nice, then moved into reds, starting with a Limited Release Tempranillo 2006. My sister was a big fan of this wine and it certainly has promise and plenty of spice, but it seemed to me as though it needs some more time in the bottle before it’s ready to blossom into a butterfly. We followed the Tempranillo with the Mount Baker Malbec 2005. This wine is pretty classically Malbec, with ripe, black fruits like blackberry jam, and violets on the nose. It received a star in my tasting notebook, and I liked it enough to splurge—the Malbec is the most expensive dry wine on the list at a wild $22—and bring it back to LA with me. I opened it on Sunday night over a football game and pizza with my brother Michael, and I hate to say it but the wine fell flat. Now, I can’t say if my palate was whacked up in Washington, the effects of too much indulgence, or if my bottle was a dud, but back at home this wine, while lacking any noticeable flaws, was also lacking any noticeable character, and just didn’t do it for me or for my brother. It was like Chinese food, or New Years Eve—it’s just not as good as you were sure it was going to be.

From there we tasted a Barrel Select Syrah 2005—a perfumed cowgirl standing by the swinging doors of the old saloon, awkwardly adjusting her dress with her dirty hands but all the more gorgeous for it—and a Limited Release Cabernet Sauvignon 2006, a beautiful garnet jewel in my glass but a tad under-ripe. Finally, we ended with a Late Harvest Pinot Gris 2002, which sells at $20 for a 375ml. I had never had a late harvest pinot gris before, and I must tell you, I was pretty excited when I saw the glowing strawberry blonde liquid splashing gracefully into my glass. The grapes prior to harvest were “twice frozen by Mother Nature” according to Bill. A bit of botrytis—called ‘noble rot’ in viticulture, botrytis is a fungus that occurs both intentionally and not and produces a sweet, concentrated wine ripe with honeyed flavors—made the Pinot Gris pop. At 14.5% residual sugar, it was sweet, but a good acidity rounded it out, and the 9.7% alcohol added extra support against the sugar. The Late Harvest Pinot Gris was Shirley Temple meets Miley Cyrus: sweet and huggable but somehow sassy and a bit dangerous. Mary and I debated picking a bottle up, but decided to move on to some local Washington beers instead, but that’s a whole other story.

Cheers.