Feb. 26, 2003
Nose for wine:
Herald wine columnist Bob Woehler recalls 25 years of tasting, writing about wines

It was 25 years ago this week that I launched myself into the best job I've ever had - tasting and writing about Pacific Northwest wines.

What other job can you do sitting down to a gourmet lunch at the governor's mansion in Olympia or raising a glass of red wine in salute at the funeral of a dear friend?

The mansion visit came in the early 1980s after Gov. John Spellman was taken with Washington's new wine industry. He decided to invite a few winemakers and others in the trade and toss in a couple of wine writers for good measure.

There I was across the table from the governor trying to daintily nibble a savory salmon dish, sip crisp, cool wine and make small talk with the governor. Not bad for a farm writer who once had a couple hundred pounds of potatoes and dirt dumped into the trunk of his car. No wonder I thought writing a wine column would be cool.

The funeral toast was on July 14, 2001, for Bill Preston, the pioneer winery owner. Somehow it seemed quite fitting to raise a glass of Preston cabernet sauvignon to honor a longtime friend and fellow wine lover.

My first brush with the Washington wine industry came in 1976, when as the farm writer for the Tri-City Herald I was assigned to look up a Pasco tractor dealer who was building a winery.

The Tri-Cities didn't have any wineries then, and wine making was a novelty. I remember taking a photograph at the first crush that fall, when Cathy Preston, Bill's then 16-year-old daughter, went barefoot to crush grapes the Old World way. And I recalled that moment as I toasted Bill's memory.

A quarter century of writing about wines also brought me in contact with a world of people who share the same interests.

At first, the Washington and Pacific Northwest wine industry grew slowly and steadily. My first column on Feb. 28, 1979, was called Wine and Vine and didn't include any comments about how wine smelled or tasted. That would come later.

It told about tiny wine shops that had sprung up around the Mid-Columbia. I chose the subject because at the time I was regional editor for the Herald and in charge of news from Othello, Sunnyside and Hermiston.

The wine shops included the Vintage Room at the Old Hotel in Othello, The Picnic Basket in Sunnyside, the Runcible Spoon in Hermiston and the Wine Celler in Richland.

Gladys Para of the Vintage Shop said her best sellers were Preston and Chateau Ste. Michelle, but she also sold Hinzerling, Bingen, Manfred Vierhaler, Associated Vintners, Alhambra and Nawico.

It was a small beginning. Preston, Chateau Ste. Michelle, Hinzerling and Associated Vintners (now Columbia) are still around today.

Those wineries, along with Knudsen Erath, Sokol Blosser, Amity, Eyrie, Adelsheim, Oak Knoll and Tualatin in Oregon, Ste. Chapelle in Idaho, and Sumac Ridge in British Columbia, were the only wineries I can recall in the early days.

Those 13 or so wineries from early days have exploded to 504 and counting in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia today.

One of the people who put the Mid-Columbia on the wine map in those early days was Bill Preston. His winery's 1977 chardonnay, tended by new winemaker Rob Griffin, won the first grand prize ever awarded by the Seattle Enological Society. It remains among the finest chardonnays I've ever tasted because of its absolutely perfect balance.

I think it was selling for about $6 a bottle when it won that award, and I knew that Bill, who liked to charge whatever he could for his wine, probably would be quick to raise the price. So I hot-footed it to his winery knowing the family was still in Seattle celebrating. I bought a case at $6 a bottle. Sure enough, a couple of days later, the price went up to about $10. It wasn't easy to stay a jump ahead of Bill.

He regularly was in the middle of the day's good stories. He once got into a dispute with a vineyard that furnished grapes for a riesling he had bottled and labeled with the vineyard name. He had each unsold bottle brought back to the bottling room and somehow blacked out the vineyard name. It was christened "blackout" riesling.

Another early-day column was about Gary Figgins and his new Leonetti Winery, which was then an oversized backyard shed, a far cry from the classic wine cellars and caves he has today.

Even then, there was a hint of the fame that was to come. "He has a 1978 cabernet sauvignon aging in French oak casks that will be released in 1981 that is showing the character, beautiful color and aroma associated with a fine cabernet," I wrote.

That wine put Leonetti on the national wine map and created a cult following for his cabernets and merlots. Today, people buy everything Leonetti produces in a single weekend and beg to get on the waiting list to be on his mailing list.

That first column discussed a gewürztraminer and riesling Figgins had produced for $5 a bottle. He soon gave up whites and concentrated on reds. The 1978 cabernet that was judged by one national magazine as the best in America sold for $11. Ah, the good ol' days.

Another column that first year talked about Coke Roth, a Kennewick beer and wine distributor with a soft drink first name.

It was the start of an association that continues today based on our mutual enjoyment of wine and our keen interest in local wines and wineries.

Coke was my mentor then. One prophecy in that 1979 column was that Roth said "he has seen the habits of Tri-City wine drinkers change from favoring generic wines like chablis and rosé to varietals like chardonnay and cabernet sauvignon. And he expects Tri-City wine drinkers to become even more discerning."

My relationship with Coke has come 360 degrees. He used to open the door for me to wine functions and winery visits. Today, he's a lawyer, out of the business except for wine judging and his legal work for some wineries. He says he now depends on me to open the doors.

That 1979 column also mentioned the first-ever Tri-City Wine Festival and judging planned in July. Roth and the Tri-Cities Visitors and Convention Bureau were the founders.

This coming November, the Tri-City Wine Festival will celebrate its 25th year. Few events have done as much to put Washington wines on the international map. It attracts wine writers and other experts to judge Pacific Northwest wines who then spread the word about our quality. I've attended every one, and for many years I was involved up to my nostrils.

Back in the festival's early years, my wife, Joyce, and I were hosts of a Sunday morning backyard brunch for all the visiting wineries. Many people say today it was one of their favorite festival events where people interested in the emerging Pacific Northwest wine industry could gather and gab while enjoying the wines.

My neighbors got used to 100 or more cars parked along the streets near my house. Attendance reached about 300. Joyce said one of those who attended was so impressed that he asked if we would rent out our back yard. That never happened, but I fondly recall those early days when everyone was just bubbling with enthusiasm about the fledgling business.

At about the same time, F.W. Langguth, who came from a long-established German wine family that could trace its winery roots back 200 years, opened a large new winery in the middle of the Columbia Basin not far from Mattawa.

He had been badly scarred when serving as a tank command for Rommel in North Africa during World War II, but after the war he returned to the family business.

His Northwest dream is owned now by Stimson, but back then Langguth brought a Teutonic blend to our local wines, including some wonderful rieslings.

Not long after I began writing, Columbia Crest, the Northwest's largest winery, dedicated its new Paterson facility and decided to invite neighboring Horse Heaven Hills farmers, civic leaders, industry folks and the media.

A Seattle catering firm trucked in gourmet delectables to the barren reaches of Eastern Washington. Included were 1,500 raw oysters on the half shell. Most of the 200 or so folks who attended weren't fans of raw oysters. But I love them. I think more than a couple dozen disappeared down my throat, accompanied by some wonderfully crisp white wine. For a while, I thought I was in oyster heaven, not Horse Heaven.

It really hit home last year that I may be an aging vintage myself. I was invited to Columbia Winery's 40th anniversary celebration, with the opportunity to dine atop the Seattle Space Needle. As I watched the Puget Sound skyline revolve, I was hit with a bit of déjà vu: I took the same turn atop the Space Needle 20 years earlier at Columbia's 20th anniversary.

My general relationship with winery owners over the years has felt more like a friend of the family than anything else. The difficulty at times has been keeping friendship from overhyping a particular wine. One of the best ways to do that is to taste a wine blind without knowing its maker.

And it's become easier to praise the wines over the years because of their steady improvement. In the early days, there was a fair chance a wine would be mediocre. Today, that's rare.

With the column that carries my picture being published every two weeks for the past quarter-century, I'm regularly stopped in grocery stores by people asking advice. And when I'm introduced to people, they often remark, "Oh, you're the wine guy."

I remember once while I was in a Portland Safeway shopping for groceries when visiting my son, a little old woman asked for advice. Since I'm 6 feet 6 inches tall, I suspect it was physical stature not wine stature that prompted the question.

That seemed confirmed when she asked me to recommend a white port, a favorite on skid road. That deflated my ego, but I told her Gallo's $1.29 white port would be just fine.

Back in 1979, my new column was tolerated by Publisher Glenn C. Lee until the day I ran a column on judging wines, complete with a picture of wine grape grower Jerry Bookwalter, who sported a fine full beard. Bookwalter also was clutching a wine bottle in a brown paper bag. The caption explained the bag was used to cover the label to provide a "blind" judging.

All Glenn saw in his newspaper was a guy who needed a shave holding a bagged bottle of wine like a wino might. The crew-cut Glenn didn't like beards and wasn't much for anything with alcohol. I'm glad to say I weathered that storm.

Several years later, as I started to visit wineries and taste wines regularly for my column while on the job, new Publisher Jack Briggs had a policy letter inserted into my file about my travels.

In essence, it said if I tasted wine and spit without swallowing, I could return to work. If I swallowed any wine, then I should go home and not return to work that day. I had brains enough to know that if I regularly went home after tasting wine, my future at the Herald would be in jeopardy, so it was sniff, swill and spit from then on.

Five years ago, I found a new venue to sharpen my career as a wine writer when Wine Press Northwest magazine was created. Andy Perdue and Eric Degerman hatched the idea for the magazine on Pacific Northwest wines, to be published by the Tri-City Herald. I was consulted to help launch what became a rousing success that has greatly expanded my wine knowledge.

I've never ceased to be amazed about how readers have kept pace with this ever-changing industry as new varieties of wine such as syrah, pinot gris, sangiovese and viognier have joined the mainstream cabernet sauvignon, merlot, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, gewürztraminer, riesling and pinot noir.

It remains a great job, meeting new winery people, hearing their expectations and being amazed at how many come true.