A hotbed of superlative reds

WALLA WALLA, WASH. — Last summer, local winemaker David "Merf" Merfeld, of Northstar Winery threw a party at his home here in the southeastern quadrant of Washington state. It's fair to say that close to half of the town's young winemakers were crowded into Merfeld's kitchen and onto his patio that night, uncorking just-bottled Syrahs, pouring newly completed blends into each other's glasses, eagerly seeking opinions from their fellows, sniffing and swirling and spitting into sinks and buckets and nosing around for a taste of something else.

Until recently, this concentration of activity and camaraderie was rare in the eastern Washington wine community because the place is so sparsely populated that there weren't enough winemakers in one place to fill a kitchen. Most vineyards were huge and remote, as were many of the wineries, and the towns remained small and agriculturally driven, built around the harvest of apples or asparagus or winter wheat.

But in the last decade, a winemaking quorum has gathered to capitalize on the region's bounty. New vintners, drawn from the ranks of occupations as diverse as former onion farmers and former big-city sommeliers, as well as imported talent from France and Switzerland, have driven the quality of Walla Walla wine into unheard-of territory and created a community that's rapidly accelerating the learning curve.

If you leave Pinot Noir out of the equation (it's much too warm and dry here for Pinot), no region in the country is more exciting for red wines, including Syrahs, Cabernets and Bordeaux-style blends. Wineries such as Pepper Bridge, Abeja, Amavi and Tamarack are earning praise alongside well-established pioneers, including Leonetti, L'Ecole No. 41 and Woodward Canyon.

--

Acres to explore

Perhaps the energy is most palpable in the region's Syrahs, whose exotic flavors and velvet-glove textures are creating a buzz and staining teeth from Seattle restaurants to Pasadena wine bars. In fact, I'd venture to say Walla Walla may boast the highest concentration of quality Syrah outside of the Rhone Valley in France.

The Walla Walla appellation is a vast, bowl-shaped valley stretching 340,000 acres and extending several miles over the state's border into Oregon. The AVA (American Viticultural Area) was established in 1983, and then, like a sandlot waiting for a lineup, it stood nearly idle for a decade.