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A Northwest Wine Primer, Part 2

© Eric Cook

Like most of the world's greatest vineyard locations, the vineyards of the Pac NW are also dictated by their proximity to rivers. In France, we are familiar with the wines grown along the Rhône, the Loire, the Garonne and the Rhine. In the Pac NW, our vineyards are clustered along the banks and hillsides of the Columbia, the Snake, the Yakima and the Willamette. The biggest differences are historical.

Vinifera grapes were not the first grape type of choice here. In some places, you can drive by a vineyard and be accosted by the grapey aroma that hangs around it like a gauze - here you have discovered a vineyard of Concord grapes. This crop, sent to Mogan David, Gallo and Welch's over the years, meant a great cash crop for the Pac NW as well as a reputation for providing the juice that covered toast as easily as the palates of a generation of hobos. The grape juice coming out of the area did not carry any prestige, but the situation carried its own solution. The silver lining came from the sheer number of acres that this maligned grape kept from becoming grazing land, wheat field or orchard. It left room for the fine wine industry to grow - and grow it has. But let's back up a bit.

Washington, Idaho and Oregon were 'dry' 2 & 3 years before passage of the Volstead Act, which would later become the 18th Amendment to the Constitution (Prohibition). Prohibition began early in all 3 states by dint of the state's legislations which prohibited the manufacture, distribution, sale AND consumption of alcohol. (Prohibition-like laws were originally enacted in 1844 in the Oregon Territory to keep ardent spirits from being traded to the American Indians.) In the years following Repeal, Washington would adopt some of the strictest alcohol regulatory laws in the nation. To this day, there are few states with more conservative alcohol regulations than Washington and Idaho. It was not until 1948 that hard liquor was even available in local restaurants.

This "loosening" conservatism was mirrored by national politics and expressive of the changing mood towards alcohol as WWII soldiers returned from a Europe that employed wine as part of a diet. (By 1953, E&J Gallo were doing big business with Washington, contracting for 300,000 gallons of Concord juice, which would grow to 1.5 million gallons by 1970.)

Early on, the Northwest relied almost completely upon its natives to support its table wine industry and California table wines faced a heavy tariff to be sold here. (California threatened to boycott Washington apples at one point.)