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 Annette Bergevin '86 created Bergevin Lane, one of the new wave of small wineries to hit Washington in the last four years.
Walla Walla
Annette Bergevin is focused on a different kind of perfume. The
co-owner of Walla Walla's Bergevin Lane notes that her new Columbia
Valley Calico Red has a certain compelling flavor. "Can you guess
what it is?" she asks, as she pours a taste into a glass. I sniff
and swirl and take a sip as she leads the way into a cavernous room
filled with oak casks and gleaming steel tanks.
Until a few years ago, Bergevin, who graduated from WSU in 1986
with a communications degree, had been living in the Bay Area of
California in the thick of the telecom industry. But she dropped
that fast-paced life for one at home in Walla Walla, where she
could work with her family. She comes by wine through her father,
an eastern Washington vineyard owner. With his help and the
encouragement of her business partner Amber Lane, Bergevin started
making wine. "We had a lot of support from folks around town," says
Bergevin. That included help from well-known winemaker Rusty
Figgins, who urged them to hire French enologist Virginie Bourgue.
Bergevin Lane's first release was in 2001, and now they've made the
wine lists of restaurants and resorts throughout the Northwest.
Bergevin still can't believe her path. "I wake up every morning and
I think, 'Are we really doing this?'"
The young winery owner is grateful to Walla Walla's pioneers
such as Rick Small of Woodward Canyon and Leonetti's Gary Figgins,
two men who put the appellation on the map in the 1970s. Their
standards of quality have made a name for the small wine region;
now it's up to the rest of the wineries to maintain that
reputation, says Bergevin.
By this time, I've finished most of my Calico sample. It hits
me. "Grapefruit!" Bergevin smiles.
Wine is changing Washington. Communities like Woodinville,
Whidbey Island, and Walla Walla have caught the nation's attention,
thanks to the high-quality vintages they're producing. And in the
wake of their wines come elite chefs and high-end stores ready to
cater to the wine-buying crowds.
Still, at 6 p.m. one Tuesday last summer, we struggled to find a
place in Walla Walla for dinner. The two "hot" new restaurants were
closed, the backup bistro had shut down for a wedding, and the
sun-baked streets were nearly empty.
"One of the gaps we have is scope of amenities in wine country,"
says Ted Baseler, president and CEO of Ste. Michelle Wine Estates.
"Look at Napa, the number and quality of restaurants, spas, hotels,
shops, and galleries. It really makes it a great experience,
whether you want to try the wine or not. That's where we're still
falling a little short."
There are a few other sour notes. The long-time residents still
strive to adjust to the lifestyles and tastes of the newcomers.
People like Adelle Ganguet, who attended WSU briefly in 1940 before
coming home to marry a farmer in Dixie, can hardly imagine paying
$34 for a steak at one of the fancy new places when she can get it
for $12 at her favorite spot. "Thirty-four dollars? I'd have to eat
a lot of food for that," she says.
Ganguet, ever interested in the news of the community, keeps her
ears open to the conflicts between the area's traditional wheat and
onion farmers and the new folk planting vineyards and building
tasting rooms. A few years ago grape growers filed a law suit
against other farmers to stop the aerial application of an
herbicide which was harming some of the grapes.
"Yeah, there's some tension there. It's just the tension of
differences of use," says Jim Hayner ('72 Econ.), a Walla
Walla-based attorney. Hayner handled the case of a New York
investor who grew up in Walla Walla and wanted to come back and
open a winery and tasting room near town. His plans ground to a
halt when his neighbors argued it would bring too much traffic to a
rural area.
In spite of the occasional resistance, this corner of the state
produces a dazzling collection of good wines. The number of
wineries in Walla Walla, Yakima, and the Columbia Valley has grown
exponentially. In four years the number of Washington wineries has
more than doubled from about 170 to 360.
Among the newcomers is Cougar Crest, a small company headed by
winemaker Debbie Hansen ('79 Pharm.) and her husband, David ('77
D.V.M.), who manage 50 acres of vines. The couple started making
wine in 2001. They've kept their day jobs, though maybe not for
much longer.
Their past year was better than they could have imagined. The
Cougar Crest 2002 Syrah scored a 94 in Wine Spectator. "I
was kind of awestruck," says Debbie Hansen, who knew the wine was
good, but didn't know how the marketplace would like it. "I
submitted it in a lot of competitions just to see how it would
measure up." Then the Spectator review came out last winter.
"It was read by a lot more people than I ever thought." She didn't
even have a subscription to the magazine. The orders started
pouring in.
What Hansen learned at WSU gave her the science grounding she
needed to make wine. She then polished her skills with winemaking
classes in California. "You can walk right out of pharmacy school
and right into enology," she says. "The rest of it is taste,
experience, and good taste buds."
On the other side of town, where Highway 12 stretches west, Rick
Small ('69 Ag.) has transformed his family wheat farm into a
vintner's domain. Still, he has anything but the artifice one might
expect from a lauded pioneer in the Walla Walla scene. On a busy
weekend last spring he stood in the middle of his Woodward Canyon
winery in a t-shirt, sandals, and shorts, chumming it up with the
customers and sampling his latest chardonnay. "It's pretty good,"
he said, grinning and swirling. Wine junkies surrounded him in
everything from their best diamonds to funky grape-themed Hawaiian
shirts.
While people milled by, eager to meet him, Small pondered why
Washington wine is not more widespread. He set down his glass and
moved to the door, where it was quieter. "I think our story is a
harder story to tell," he said. "People don't know what we do
best." He pointed to the chardonnay, then mentioned the Cabernets,
the Syrahs, the merlots, the Gewürztraminers, the Rieslings. "We
have so many wines and grapes that we do well. People talk about
Oregon and they mean Pinot, but they don't even know what the hell
it is we do."
Well, a few do. On that spring release weekend, Small saw close
to a thousand customers. As he talked, a limo drove by, and a
private helicopter beat through the air over the winery and landed
in a nearby field.
While the industry is growing fast now, Small hadn't expected it
to take this long. He sees a future Washington with many more
high-quality boutique wineries and a world-class reputation.
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A few years ago a farmer carried a bucket of bad grapes into
the lab of viticulturist Markus Keller at the WSU Prosser Research
Center. Keller had never seen anything quite like it, clusters of
shriveled, sour, colorless fruit. It's like the plants decided they
had had enough and quit, he says. When a few other farmers invited
Keller to their vineyards to diagnose the same problem, he realized
the concern was widespread.
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