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Washington
Most of the world's classic grapes grow in many places, but each has a spiritual home where it ascends beyond merely good; in the 1990s Washington State emerged, to most wine drinkers' surprise, as one of the great spiritual homes of cabernet sauvignon and merlot.
The phenomenon was startling, since barely a dozen years earlier growers had pinned their hopes on gewürztraminer, chardonnay and other whites — which still make good wine there, but nothing like the top tier of cabernets and merlots.
By the late 1990s two more grapes captured growers' imaginations: riesling and syrah.
Key grapes
- Cabernet Sauvignon
- Merlot
- Riesling
- Syrah
- climate
- arid, almost desert-like eastern Washington; the Cascade range acts as a rain shield against the wet west
- classification system
- AVA — thirteen in the state, most nested within the Columbia Valley
- signature
- highly structured, deeply flavoured reds of striking concentration — wild Northwest berry character
- viticulture note
- one of the few places worldwide where many vines grow on their own roots, not grafted rootstock
- rank
- second-largest wine-producing state in the US
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