Walla Walla: Saturday Wine Tastings

This is one in a series of posts about our recent trip to Walla Walla over a long weekend. It covers our Saturday wine tastings at three wineries: Tranche, Force Majeure, and Pepper Bridge.

Besides celebrating Ann's 60th birthday in style, we also wanted to explore several Walla Walla wineries because Walla Walla, although our neighbor across the river in Washington, is one of the few American wine areas that I have not visited. I find that understanding the context and the geology of the land is helpful to me in appreciating the wines from a region.

Saturday late morning would see us meet up with our old friend Dimitri Galanis from Northern Virginia whom we had not seen since perhaps 2013, a decade in the rear view mirror. He and a group of his friends were coincidentally coming to Walla Walla at the same time as us and we were looking very forward to meeting him and his friends. He and his group had already done all the legwork in setting up tastings during their stay and were so kind to include Ann and me.

This was a fortunate turn of affairs because I really know very little about which wineries are producing good wine. I know the AVAs and where they are situated from my sommelier days at the restaurant, but as for recent experience with the wines, I have none. Ann and I, our tastes run to Pinot Noir and Nebbiolo, light-bodied aromatic wines with snappy acidity and in the case of Nebbiolo, great tannins. So we really have not explored the Rhône- and Bordeaux-style wines of Washington State (and a tiny bit of Oregon too). Perhaps we would find wines to our taste and perhaps not, but we were looking forward to the experience nonetheless.

Tranche

Our first stop was at Tranche, second project of Corliss Winery, conveniently situated right on the outskirts of Walla Walla, just a quick drive from our inn. Here we first met Dimitri and his merry group of friends: Russ, Fae, and Daniella. It turns out that Russ and I are both from the Charlottesville, Virginia area and although we went to the same school, we did not know each other as Russ is five years older than me. That and he lived in the western part of the county and after my family moved out of Charlottesville proper, we moved to the northern part of the county, perhaps 20 miles apart.

After the obligatory meet-and-greet and catching up with Dimitri, we tasted outside under a big awning beside the tasting room right next to the vines from which our server picked a few Petit Verdot grapes for us to taste. They're getting there, but weren't ready yet. The sugars were a bit low and the seeds were only about half ripe. We tasted through the line-up starting with a pretty rosé and ended up buying a small amount of Cabernet Sauvignon, a wine that is way bigger than we normally drink. 

Petit Verdot

Force Majeure

Our next stop was over the border in Oregon at one of the flagship wineries of the tiny AVA aptly named the Rocks District of Milton-Freewater. The overarching and encompassing AVA for this area is the Columbia Valley AVA, comprising land in Washington and Oregon on both sides of the Columbia River. Within this is the much smaller Walla Walla Valley AVA centered on the city of Walla Walla and extending to a small area across the border in Oregon.

In the Oregon section of the Walla Walla Valley AVA sits the minuscule Rocks District AVA, an alluvial fan of cobbles situated north of the town of Milton-Freewater OR and south of the Washington State line. The rocks here remind me of those in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, rocks that they call galets in French.

Based on my experience wrangling wine label approvals through the TTB, I know that this mishmash of AVAs and states is a nightmare. As far as alcohol labeling regulations are concerned, I do not believe that anyone ever anticipated AVAs crossing state boundaries in this way, especially a sub-AVA that is in a different state than the state in which the bulk of the wineries are built. In this case, because Rocks is in Oregon, a winery five miles away in Washington cannot use the Rocks AVA designation because a wine must be labeled in the state in which it is vinted. The TTB regulations for wine labeling are complex enough without throwing sub-AVAs and state boundaries into the mix.

Driving to the Force Majeure tasting room takes you through agricultural fields, the sides of the road lined with various vegetables and fruit trees, including a lot of bare cherry trees and apple trees laden with as yet unpicked fruit. I noticed that one of the cross streets was called Winesap Road, very fitting indeed and one of my favorite apples.

The Force Majeure tasting room appears innocuous enough from the outside, but is pretty spectacularly appointed inside. I really enjoyed tasting all their wines and we ended up buying some of their lower end GSM to take with us. My second love in France after Bourgogne is the northern Rhône, so I am no stranger to really good Syrah. And really good Syrah is what they make in the Rocks District.

Kudos to Force Majeure for serving a bit of tête de moine (Monk's head) cheese with the tasting. Its funky flavor mingles so well with red wines. This is one of the more unique and delicious Swiss alpine cheeses. I love it.

Tête de Moine Cheese

Pepper Bridge

We left Force Majeure to head back to Washington state to Pepper Bridge Winery. On the way down to taste at Force Majeure, we noticed that gas was 80 cents cheaper in Oregon than in Washington, so we stopped on the way to Pepper Bridge to fill up. That's a savings of $16 for our 20-gallon tank versus filling up in Washington which has the same prices that we have back in Bend.

The way to Pepper Bridge took us through more agricultural areas that are apparently attractive to any number of birds. We spied large flocks of magpies and wild turkeys, as well as several pheasants. While the hen pheasants are colored to blend in, the Ring-Necked cocks are resplendent in flight with their green-blue heads, white neck rings, chestnut bodies, and buff wings, all gleaming brilliantly in the bright afternoon sun.

Pepper Bridge was our last visit of the day–trust me, we weren't drinking; merely sipping and dumping. The winery is unique in that you must drive directly through another winery, Northstar, to get there. Pepper Bridge is beautifully sited among the vines with great views of the Blue Mountains as a backdrop. Alas, the wines are so-so and the service was perfunctory and disinterested, a sort of rote check-the-box tasting of the sort that we detest. We like servers who are invested in their wines and love to show them off. We would not return here and we did not purchase any wine here.

Ugh! Forest Fire Smoke

After wrapping up our tastings for the day, we all headed back to our respective rooms to rest and freshen up for our 7:30 dinner at Saffron, more about which in the next post.