That is, they imitate the sheer variety of Californian viticulture as well as the nearly inimitable climates of Europe. The chardonnays from OR can be that much more Burgundian, the gewurztraminers from WA that much more Alsatian, the rieslings of ID that much more German and everybody's chenin blancs can have you look up expecting to spot a renaissance castle or a perfectly symmetrical garden.
So where is the regional identity? What makes the PacNW worth being a white wine region?
The same things that originally set any climatically friendly region on the road to winedom, in fact the same things that make any agricultural product worth the trouble of seeking out: people, soil, and the passion to do it well.
Trivia: The PacNW wine grape plantings only surpassed Concord plantings just this year!
While the NW corner of the US has historically been known for concord and riesling production, the soils of Eastern Washington, Southwestern Idaho and Western Oregon are particularly suited to viticulture.
Oregon's Willamette Valley is an interesting triangulation of comparatively poor alluvial soils like parts of the Loire, maritime exposure like Bordeaux and plantings that feature the grapes of Burgundy. In hotter years like 1994 or 1998, a winemaker may get great sugar levels from his Pinot Noir, but the fruit may not yet be mature. In cooler summers, as most of them are, there are more wary eyes turned to the Pacific horizon- constantly aguard for the clouds which in the wettest years dilute their wines and cause grape skins to burst from saturation.
Washington's vineyards are more the patchwork of variety than Oregon or Idaho. The western vineyards along Puget Sound are very similar to those of Oregon, yet the soils are more volcanic. The production is also so small as to barely register on a state, let alone national, scale. The eastern vineyards produce roughly 95% of the state's winegrapes. This region, shadowed by the Cascade Range, is effectively an extension of the Mojave Desert, so when Roosevelt begot the New Deal in the 40's and began the Grand Coulee Dam Project, he made sure that it supplied irrigation canals on a grand scale to this sleeping desert. It blossomed. The soils here are a blend of alluvial and volcanic soils depending on the area of the Columbia Valley. The 1981 eruption of Mt. St. Helens dusted this entire region with ash that is still visible almost 20 years later; this was a natural fertilizer of sorts to the vegetation (though it destroyed the '81 vintage). Since then, there have been fits and starts, killer freezes and scorching summers, as well as the usual undulations of consumption.
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