Washington Annual Report: A Wine Nation Unto Itself

Washington’s best winemakers are as headstrong as they are creative. Many have the capability to make exciting quality wines even under the most difficult conditions – from freak frosts and heat spikes to devastating wildfires and smoke.

Associate Editor Claire Nesbitt and I tasted in March more than 600 wines, mostly from the 2020 vintage, during a little over a week in the state and we were impressed with so many wines.

Unlike the cooler 2019 vintage, which we focused on in our annual Washington report in 2022, the state experienced a relatively warm year in 2020 with a much smaller crop than average, although bud break and bloom occurred close to their historical norms. A moderate summer with a few heat spikes in late July and early August resulted in a relatively early harvest that started in the third week of August, and September saw a pause in harvesting due to significant wildfire smoke from Oregon. But a few Washington wine regions were relatively unaffected, and  some producers were able to make exceptional wines.

“2020 started out really good for us,” said Paul Golitzin, the president and director of winemaking for Quilceda Creek. “It was relatively dry, forcing very small berries that are super-concentrated. The skin-to-juice ratios grew significantly, as berries were 10 to 15 percent smaller than usual. So it's really, really small berries, concentrated fruit. And overall, the growing season was really exceptional.”

The result was one of our top-rated Washington wines, the Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignon Columbia Valley 2020. This benchmark for Washington cabernet shows beautiful fruit concentration with blackberries, blackcurrants, dark chocolate and red licorice. It’s deep and wide on the palate and has waves of plush, finely grained tannins coming through, pushing the wine’s depth and unveiling its dark fruit. It’s simply one of the best wines Quilceda Creek has ever made.

Golitzin said the smoke didn’t directly affect Quilceda Creek’s operations, except for blocking the sunlight and extending the growing season, pushing the harvest into the cooler parts of September and October. “Red Mountain and Horse Heaven Hills are not valleys,” he said, referring to the Washington AVAs Quilceda Creek operates in. “So when the smoke arrived, it didn't stay but rather blew through. Maybe it just delayed ripening by blocking some UV light. But we had a long enough season.”

Unfortunately, not everyone was able to bottle their 2020s, including Betz Family Winery in Redmond. Bob Betz, the owner, said it was a painful but necessary decision not to bottle, despite the fact that, “We worked our whole life to try to make the wines better and better every year.”

Betz winemaker Louis Skinner said 2020 was the first year they had smoke “in a very real way” in Columbia Valley. “We were picking while the smoke was out there. It was right in the middle of our season, and so there was some ash on grapes in certain vineyards,” he said on the conditions that led to the decision not to bottle that year.

However, we did taste Betz’s 2021 releases, which also came from a warm vintage that produced some excellent wines, especially in the case of Betz’s Bordeaux and Rhone varieties. The Betz Cabernet Sauvignon Red Mountain Heart of the Hill 2021 and Betz Syrah Yakima Valley Red Willow Vineyard La Côte Patriarche 2021 were among our favorites.

Other Washington producers were only partially affected by the smoke in 2020. Walla Walla-based Leonetti Cellar, for example, had to declassify fruit from some of their vineyards, but they had plenty left from their other vineyards to choose from. They made some exceptional wines, including the Leonetti Cellar Cabernet Sauvignon Walla Walla Valley Serra Pedace Vineyard 2020 and Figgins Walla Walla Valley Estate Red 2020.

READ MORE OREGON ANNUAL REPORT: SILVER LININGS FROM 2020 AND THE QUEST FOR PREMIUM CHARDONNAY

THE QUEST FOR PURITY

One winemaker who makes terrific wines under any conditions is Brennon Leighton of K Vintners and House of Smith, who has always been firmly on our radar. He uses a unique, more reductive style in each of his wines to maintain freshness and purity of fruit, and he remained at the top of his game in 2020 with the K Vintners Grenache Walla Walla Valley The Boy 2020 and K Vintners Syrah Yakima Valley Motor City Kitty 2020, each of which boasted some of the highest scores for the state.

And Motor City Kitty’s 2021 and 2022 barrel samples were amazing for their purity and complexity. Leighton explained what went into the making of the wines while showing us the barrels in K Vintners’ cellar.

"Everything we do is thick staves,” he said. “On some wines, we're about 38 to 40 mm thick. So we like the thicker staves … [and] everything we do is extremely reductive. We don't rack any of our barrels until it's time to bottle. I truly believe that lees are what give wines their vitality and their life, and I think they're the thing that kind of gives them longevity. And so we use them a lot.

“We don’t steer them to prevent oxidation, we just let them sit at the bottom,” he added. “Obviously, as the temperature rises and lowers in the barrel, it's always moving and rubbing against the lees and doing its thing.”

His wines go in as many different directions as the Washington wine scene itself, with his co-fermented cabernet sauvignon and syrah blends the best examples. It takes lots of skill and vineyard work to match the ripeness found in these blends, as well as to harvest each variety at the same time.

Christophe Baron, a Frenchman who owns Cayuse Vineyards in Walla Walla Valley, reflects a whole different side of Washington wine. He sees himself less as a technician in the cellar than a master craftsman. “I'm not a winemaker, I'm a vigneron,” he told us. “And you know the difference between a vigneron and a winemaker? It is more like being an artist. So therefore there is no winery here but the wine studio.”

Baron originally intended to grow pinot noir in Willamettte Valley, Oregon, until he fell in love with a 10-acre property in Walla Walla that was dotted with stones and reminded him of the cobblestoned terroir of the southern Rhone valley and Chateauneuf-du-Pape. He has now been making wines in what is now Walla Walla’s Rocks District since 1997.

He makes some of the best grenache and syrah in the region, and 2020 was no exception for him. His Cayuse Vineyards Syrah Walla Walla Valley Bionic Frog 2020, Horsepower Grenache Walla Walla Valley Fiddleneck Vineyard 2020 and Hors Categorie Syrah Walla Walla Valley 2020 are all captivating works of art, representing the true nature of grenache and syrah and the terroir they come from – deep, rich and flavorful, with a delightful spiciness accompanied by pure and lingering fruitiness.

While considering Christophe and what he has done for Washington wines, it’s easy to come to the conclusion that this land needed a winemaker exactly like him: one who wasn’t afraid to change the order of things and dare to dream big.

And the state really doesn’t need to hang its wine hat on any single grape variety, as Averyl Mooney, the senior communications manager of the Washington State Wine Commission, told me. “Washington produces 80 different varieties, and there's a lot of people that are doing a lot of different stuff, even within the same AVAs,” she pointed out.

Indeed, Washington is so diverse that it’s hard to land on its singular selling point. Whether it’s cabernet sauvignon from Red Mountain or syrah from Walla Walla, “We are a vast country that can be broken down to smaller pieces with its own identity,” as Leighton put it.

What’s next for Washington? Skinner, the Betz Family winemaker, said much work remains to be done, especially in the vineyards.

“We have come a long way, from around 200 producers in 2000 to about 1,000 in 2019,” Betz said. “Our next step will be sharpening our expertise and precision in the vineyard.

“Also, we were late adopters of organic and biodynamic farming. We need to work on it more, and the economics of the vineyard has to change before we move forward.”

We have no doubt the state’s wine producers will move forward – in as many different directions as there are creative winemakers, each with the impetus to craft something unique and compelling.

– Andrii Stetsiuk, Associate Editor

Note: You can sort the wines below by vintage, score and alphabetically by winery name. You can also search for specific wines in the search bar.