Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Waitsburg-based wine columnist Paul Gregutt lifts a glass to the release of his completely updated guide to Washington wines. The phrase above him is part of a twelfth-century "Latin Song of Wandering Students" that opens his book.
When Paul Gregut t the musician gets up in front of a crowd, he experiences what winemakers in the state must feel like when they're dealing with Paul Gregutt the wine critic.
"Naked and exposed," the Waitsburg columnist and singer-songwriter says with a sympathetic smile. "It's just as scary for me to do that than for any winery to send me a bottle of wine." Gregutt, whose publisher just released the completely updated second edition of his authoritative consumer guide, "Washington Wines Wineries," never set out to be a wine critic.
Rather, his interest in the subject matured like vintage in a barrel, and in the decade and a half since he started critiquing Northwest wines, his expertise has aged well. In part, he credits his life in Waitsburg at the edge of the greater Walla Walla AVA with his ability to see, "the wine country through the eyes of a resident."
It all began in college when he still knew little about wine. But when he was renting an apartment in Cuerna Vaca, Mexico, in the early 1970s and the owner invited him and his two friends to a glass of Bordeaux, Gregutt remembers being impressed. Later, when he was a, "critic of all trades," for the Seattle Weekly, the alternative
city newspaper, he proposed a wine story to his editor. That's how he began writing about the wine business and its people - in between the movie, music, media, theater, restaurant and travel reviews. The wine industry in the state was still a tiny cluster on the vine at the time, but covering it fit well with the Weekly's mindset, which Gregutt describes as a, "high-level counter culture with hippy esthetics." It didn't take long before he had a wine column in the weekly newspaper, covered Washington wines for Wine Spectator and released his first paperback, "Northwest Wines," in 1993. In 2002, two years after pioneer Seattle Times wine critic Tom Stockley died in a plane crash on his return from Puerta Vallarta, Gregutt became the newspaper's new wine columnist and remains that to this day. He recently became regional editor for Wine Enthusiast magazine.
About six years ago, Gregutt was approached by University of California Press acquisitions editor Blake Edgar, who was convinced Gregutt was the best person to write a definitive book on Washington state wines. In his acknowledgment to the book, Gregutt thanked Edgar for, "shrugging off my objections, tolerating my dithering and welcoming my first manuscript with genuine enthusiasm."
Being more of a populist than a textbook writer, Gregutt warned Edgar he wouldn't be the kind of author obsessed with documenting his research. "I told them there would be no footnotes," he says. But as in any piece of solid journalism, there is a large amount of legwork and, in this case, empirical research, underneath the seamless narrative presentation. Three years after he first talked to Edgar, the first edition
of Gregutt's "essential guide" came out. It has sold 10,000 copies in the past three years. But so much changed in the state's wine industry from 2007 to 2010, it was time for a thorough revision.
The new book has twice the number of vineyard entries and two new appellations (Lake Chelan and Snipes Mountain). The number of bonded wineries in the state has passed 650, and the 2009 grape harvest was pegged at 155,000 tons with 36,000 acres of vineyards.
Gregutt points out that Washington has seen five straight exceptional vintages since the freeze of 2004. "These are the wines that form the basis for the reviews and winery classifications in this new edition," he writes in the preface. "The quality of Washington wines, and the interest in these wines from the around the world, has reached an all-time high."
In a book likely to be read by at least 10,000 wine enthusiasts, travelers and members of the wine industry, Gregutt welcomes his audience to his adopted hometown of Waitsburg. "I saw my life change dramatically in 2005 when Mrs. G (Paul's wife and filmmaker Karen Stanton) and I purchased a rundown, all-but-abandoned farm house in the city of Waitsburg," he writes in his introduction. "We loved Waitsburg immediately, for the natural beauty of the natural landscape, for the easy cordiality of the townspeople, for the peacefulness that we felt whenever we could escape from the big city and come work on our little cottage."
As a "wine country resident," he generously covers and evaluates the vineyards and wineries in the Waitsburg area. He ranks the 2006 Spring Valley's Uriah Red from French-born winemaker Serge Laville as 36th on his top 2009 Washington wines. Dumas Station's 2005 Estate Syrah is number 44 for 2008. That Highway 12 winery and Waitsburg's Laht Neppur are also marked as "rising stars" in his book, while Jill Noble's Couvillion startup is noted as a three-star winery. He devotes half a page to describe the Spring Valley area seven miles southwest of Waitsburg, notes that its grape-growing conditions are ideal but its cultivation potential limited by scarce access to land and water. "Spring Valley wines are deep and powerful, very high in alcohol, but carry unique and fragrant aromas of grain, light herb, and explosive, jammy fruits," Gregutt writes. Reflecting on his role as a wine critic, he muses that his kind is about as well-liked as a tax collector, but says most winemakers know how to separate the personal from the professional, hence his many friends in the industry.
"Some have insisted that I never review their wines again," he says.
With 700 wineries in Washington and 400 in Oregon, Gregutt "only" visits 100 of them per year. Though he has honed his skills through such special courses as "(biologic and chemical) wine flaws" and through an Advance Certificate from the London-based Wine Spirit Education Trust, his depth of knowledge as a wine critic comes from having tasted tens of thousands of wines and met thousands of winemakers in North America, Europe, South America and Australia.
His website is very specific about what he looks for in a wine, and although taste remains something personal, readers have been following the interpretation of his palate for years.
Gregutt is regularly invited to speak to winemakers, consult wineries and offers wine tasting seminars.
"I remain a critic, not a cheerleader," he writes in his introduction, following in the same section with a solid endorsement of the industry's prospects in Washington. "More fervently than ever, I believe that Washington
state is well on its way to becoming one of the greatest wine regions in the world."
Paul Gregutt
Book Signings
11/5 - Isenhower 3 - 6 p.m. 11/6 - Nicholas Cole 12-2 p.m. 11/6 - l'Ecole 2:30 - 4:30 p.m. 11/6 Northstar 5 p.m.
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