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Quick study: Walla Walla wines are earning high marks

Sunset, Nov, 2004 by Sara Schneider

A three-college, Pleasantville prototype of a town, Walla Walla, Washington, anchors a wine-growing region in the southeast corner of the state. Clearly, students there are doing their homework, since this appellation, just 20 years old, is producing some outstanding wines: structured Cabernets and Merlots, crisp and interesting Chardonnays and Sauvignon Blancs. The Syrahs and Viogniers coming online deserve serious research too.

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One of Walla Walla's quickest studies is Abeja winemaker John Abbott. He learned his first local lesson in the fall of 1993 when he stepped off a plane in nearby Yakima in shorts, into raw weather. He wasn't in California anymore. The guys back at Acacia winery, in moderate Carneros, had warned him against coming: "'You might not get any decent food to eat. You might not be able to come back!' ... as if a stint of Washington winemaking somehow tainted your punch card," Abbott recalls. But the first impression stuck, and he became convinced that grapes do well with four distinct seasons. The next year he moved to Walla Walla, to start Canoe Ridge Vineyard's estate winery.

The decade has taken Abbott, along with a burgeoning group of other makers (there were fewer than 10 wineries in the Walla Walla Valley AVA then and nearly 60 now), to graduate-level contributions to the science: from the basics--convincing growers that fewer tons of grapes per acre mean better wine in the end (counterintuitive for farmers used to growing apples and the like)--to complex experiments with grape varieties and trellising systems in myriad microclimates in the valley.

Now Abbott has turned that science into art at Abeja, where he and his wife, Molly Galt, teamed up in 2002 with Ken and Ginger Harrison to develop a winery at the century-old farmstead-turned-inn. His methods start with an old lesson, learned as a high school kid working in cranberry bogs on the Oregon coast: Walk on stilts, so as not to damage the plants. In Abeja vineyards, Abbott's footprint is similarly light on the land, with careful, sustainable pest- and weed-control practices.

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But there's nothing light about the handwork Abbott invests in the wines. From making decisions about dropping fruit to picking and double-sorting for debris and damage, he's a vigilant monitor in the cause of maximizing lush fruit flavors and minimizing vegetal qualities. This labor comes with a price, but it's lower than you'd expect. Abeja wines deliver quality beyond their tag.

Unfortunately, there's likely to be less 2004 Abeja available than there should be, when its time comes. The weather in Walla Walla this year went too far in testing one of Abbott's theories--that after an especially cold winter, the grapes stand a chance of greatness: Many vines were severely damaged by the frost. Abeja is in for the long haul, though. Abbott has another hypothesis to prove, that Cabernet Sauvignon is Walla Walla's--and Washington's--best grape.

INFO: Abeja (tours and tastings available by appointment Wed-Sat; free; www.abeja.net or 509/526-7400)

Quick study: Walla Walla wines are earning high marks

Sunset, Nov, 2004 by Sara Schneider

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