On Tap

Washington Winners

The prime rib sandwich at Table 31.

A unique terroir produces superb wines that are great values

by Trevor Burton | photography by Trevor Burton

A simple metric describes wines from Washington State. In a snapshot taken a year or so back, I plotted a graph of regions around the world and the number of wines with a 90+ rating each produces. Washington came ahead of everyone. Then I did the same thing for the same regions, showing the average prices of their wines. The second graph was an inverse of the first one. Washington came in dead last. Interpretation—Washington wines are some of the best in the world and a lot less expensive than most others.

Washington wine country is unique. Northerly and far away from the ocean, in the eastern part of the state, it’s basically a high desert with a huge source of irrigation flowing through it. The topology of this place was carved out thousands of years ago by the Missoula Floods.

80,000 to 12,000 years ago there was the most recent Ice Age. In Idaho, a gigantic wall of ice blocked the path of the Clark Fork River. A 2,000-foot-high glacier backed water up in western Montana. The waters formed Glacial Lake Missoula. This lake was large, totaling 530 cubic miles—more than Lakes Erie and Ontario combined. Every once in a while, ice would give way and the contents of Lake Missoula would spill out and rush to the ocean.

“Spill out” is a gentle description. The spill could put a real dent in your day. The flood started in the Idaho panhandle as a wall of water 2,000 feet high. Rushing through at 70 to 80 miles an hour, it bunched into a rising boil at every canyon and constriction. Wooly mammoths didn’t have a lucky day. Humans who could have borne witness were, likewise, out of luck. Huge chunks of Washington’s basalt, volcanic base were sloughed off like deli meat. Some gravel from Montana would be carried all the way to the Pacific Ocean. Other gravel would be left in piles as high as a 40-story building. Some perspective, the deluge was 10 times the combined flow today of all the rivers on Earth—that’s a lot of water. Just one of these events would be enough to shape the area’s topology and soils but the flood repeated itself many times over. The result of all this, today, is a high desert filled with canyons through which flows the Columbia River. For a grapevine, this is geological history to celebrate.

This creates those wine nuggets that I spoke about. Washington has numerous sub-regions that produce wines which have a singular character. At any opportunity, I celebrate by taking a sip of Missoula’s legacy.

And that brings me to Table 31 in Langtree. As per usual, I dove into the wine list first. And opportunity struck. I was able to say to my wife, Mary Ellen, “Well, well; Walla Walla.” My reward was a major eye-roll. I muttered that it didn’t much matter because of one of the splendid joys of Table 31—its next door sister, the Hidden Bin Wine Shop. For a small corkage fee, one can choose from the vast array of wines available from the Wine Whisperer, Graddie Lane.

I wanted to dig a little deeper into Washington’s treasures and he, in a whispered voice, suggested a wine from the Red Mountain region. I sipped on history and enjoyed it. Red Mountain Cabernet Sauvignons tend to be full bodied, dark, and dense with dark cherry aromas and flavors. Some fruit but dominated by earthiness and some very delicate tannins. Delicious.

When it came to food to pair with my geological gem, I jumped right on an old favorite. I really like Table 31’s shaved prime rib sandwich with hot au jus. I was on to something. Digging into an interesting wine that was a great value and nibbling on a favorite dish. Thank you, Missoula Floods.