Wednesday, September 3 2008

Yakimania!

The Yakima River Valley. So beautiful, words fail.

This Labour Day weekend the long-suffering missus and I made a return pilgrimage to the Yakima Valley, one of our favourite wine regions and a long-time stomping ground for antics and exploration. On the other side of the Cascade mountain range, the vineyards of Washington are in a rain shadow that keeps them virtually desert-like most of the year (it's nothing like Seattle once you get over the Snoqualmie Pass) and sage and dry gullies greet the eye for many long miles between Cle Elum, Ellensberg and Yakima City.

We've been travelling there every year since 1998, without exception. We even crossed the border into the USA on September 12th, 2001, when border security was more than a little tight. In that time I've seen it go from a handful of barn-based wineries run by growers and orchardists to a full-on wine tourism centre, complete with star wineries, character winemakers, quiet standouts, cult wines and more styles and different bottlings than you could shake a very big stick at. We've hit the taste of Washington, the Prosser Food and Wine Fair, and enough farmer's markets to start our own grocery store.

As is our custom, we went down to the Yakima KOA to do a little camping. Nothing tops off a day of wine tasting like playing cribbage on a picnic table, by a crackling fire with a nightcap of really good Tequila in Mexican hot chocolate. One of the best, absolutely most wonderful things about Yakima is the culture and influence of the local Hispanic population.

Migrant farmworkers who followed the harvests in the USA for years would run up from San Diego, through California, Oregon and on up into Washington state, following the ripening fruits and vegetables. At the end of the line in Yakima many of them settled down, brought their families and made lives for themselves. Spanish is commonly spoken, Hispanic markets full of wonderful ingredients are common, and taco trucks and agua fresca stands are plentiful on corners and side streets. You can buy all manner of staples, like a hundred varieties of dried peppers, a couple of dozen fresh ones, canned tomatillos and poblanos in adobo, hominy, cone sugar, crema, and dozens of fancy Tequilas. Some of these items are simply unobtainable in Canada, others are merely priced out of this world.

Everything was in place as it should have been, with the unfortunate exception of the KOA. The bureau of land reclamation had bought the land, and by the time you read this it will all be underwater, as they remove the dikes and turn it back into creekbed for the Yakima river. We were lucky enough to get a hotel room (thanks Hilton travel points!) but it just wasn't the same, and they asked me to stop making cocoa over the gas fireplace in the lobby.

Old Vines at Kestrel. Doesn't look a day over 80.

But still, we got to most of the wineries we wanted to visit, including Kiona, Fidelitas, Seth Ryan, Kestrel, Hinzerling, etc, etc. Some were wonderful old friends, like Kiona and Kestrel. We held our annual US Invitational Bocce Tournament and Open Air Picnic on Kestrel's lawn, as we have every year. Something about Bocce there makes me sleepy, so we followed it up with the traditional nap in the shade, which lasts until I'm okay to drive again. It was great to see how much Kiona has changed since we first visited them way back in the old days, right after they'd hit national recognition with their Lemberger. It's a tough style to make likeable, but here they manage it very well indeed. We took away a bottle of their Chenin Blanc, with Dawn proclaiming it this year's 'Turkey wine'. Nom nom!

Others were new finds, and very interesting. Fidelitas was recommended to us by no fewer than four people in tasting rooms and wine bars around the Yakima/Prosser/Zillah/Tri-Cities area. I was deeply intrigued, and when we got there I was very impressed with their tasting room, and elegant and airy affair with a million dollar view. Absolutely hated their wines, though–all jam, alcohol, manipulation and overt oak. I can see why they make some people swoon, but you'd need a Nomex palate to drink more than a sip of the stuff. We went straight from there to Kiona and had a wonderful time drinking friendly, happy wines that you could envision opening a second bottle, just for review purposes, mind.

How do you say, 'nom nom nom' in Spanish?

After a day of burrito eating (go Taco Bus!) and some of the best coffee I've had in months (what can you say about an espresso stand that roasts their own beans right there in the parking lot?) we hit the outlet malls and meandered our way home. If there's a better way to spend time than trundling between wineries with the one you love and a carload of burritos (a car with the windows rolled down, mostly) then I don't know what it is.

See you next year Yakima. Don't ever change.

Posted by Tim AT 5:35AM

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