Focus on Washington: The New Normal

BY STEPHEN TANZER | NOVEMBER 15, 2018

Washington has experienced an unbroken succession of six very warm to hot years, but by now the state’s most serious growers and winemakers have proven that they can stand the heat.

While there are still many underperformers in Washington, at the level of the better wineries quality has never been higher than it is today, so that the number of wines rating 90 points or more in my annual coverage is by a clear margin the highest to date. And although it’s tempting to say that at today’s lofty wine prices, the wines have to be good in order to compete in the marketplace, Washington’s wines are still relative bargains compared to those of California, with many of them—reds and whites alike—offering outstanding value.

Washington State AVA Map courtesy of Washington State Wine

As I write this introduction to my annual report on Washington’s wine, I have before me a flight of white wines that would have been unthinkable even ten years ago, when the state’s interest in Rhône varieties was pretty much limited to Syrah. I’m looking at a trio of superb Marsanne (or Marsanne-based) wines that could give their counterparts in the northern Rhône Valley a run for their money. These three bottlings (from Kobayashi Winery, Reynvaan Family Vineyard and Latta Wines) have terrific energy, complexity, balance and even minerality, as well as an element of delicious, sappy fruit that gives them greater appeal than their French counterparts, at least in the early going.

Although Marsanne—or even white wine in general—is not necessarily what serious oenophiles think of when it comes to Washington’s wines, the state’s disparate soils (including basalt, clay, silt and loam), very dry climate, long warm, sunny days and typically cool nights provide growers and winemakers with the conditions for making quality wines from a remarkably large number of varieties, red and white (nearly 70 are planted in Washington today). And some of the state’s best bottlings are now coming from cooler, higher-altitude sites that were not exploited until quite recently—a trend that the recent string of very warm vintages will only accelerate. Moreover, recent vintages—2016 and especially 2017—have been conducive to picking white grapes under favorable conditions, before their aromatic top notes have been burned off by sun and heat. Red wines, too, have made the most of recent growing seasons.

Cadence Winery's Cara Mia vineyard on Red Mountain

A Succession of Hot Years with Well-Timed Cooling

By now, Washington’s last cool years (2010 and especially 2011) seem like ancient history, since the warm-up that began in 2012 has continued unabated. At the time, 2012 was a perfectly average growing season in terms of total degree days, but every vintage since then has been warmer than 2012, with 2015 and 2014 the hottest of the string. As Mike Macmorran, head winemaker/partner at Mark Ryan Winery, put it, “the hot weather patterns that we have had to deal with in vintages 2013 through 2018 appear to be the new normal, even if 2017 provided a bit of a respite from the heat.” But he was quick to add that “in the past, 2017 would have been considered hot, but in relation to the last six vintages it is really closer to average for overall heat.”

Yet while the new normal has brought generally hotter temperatures, in most recent vintages a pattern of late-season cool-downs has mitigated the potential negative effects of hot summers, often allowing growers to let their fruit hang to gain in flavor and phenolic ripeness before grape sugars become unwieldy, berries start to shrivel and natural acidity levels plunge. In fact, beginning in 2013, and with only the exception of 2017, the shape of the growing season in eastern Washington has changed markedly, with budbreak and flowering consistently occurring earlier than previously. Whereas formerly temperatures could be expected to cool down markedly by mid-September, in ’16, ’17 and particularly ’18 the end of summer heat came earlier and harvests were extended and even rather leisurely.