High on Red Mountain

There’s no better place to start at Red Mountain than at the top. Hightower Cellars operates out of a snug little tasting room and winemaking facility perched above a ten-acre vineyard, nearly at the crest of Red Mountain. The views from the patio sweep down the hill and across the valley to the north face of the Horse Heaven Hills, and give you the feeling of soaring above it all. It’s a lovely spot. Tim and Kelly Hightower chose it eight years ago, when they moved their winery from Seattle across the mountains, right to the source.

The Hightowers targeted Red Mountain fruit from their earliest vintage, in 1997. Their wines show off the earthy, brambly characteristics of the mountain, with rich black fruit flavors, and soft tannins balanced by an acidic structure. They use a soft touch when making their wines, hand-sorting, destemming and crushing the grapes directly above open-top fermenters, minimizing the tannins from broken seeds or skins. They hand-punch the must several times during fermentation, and siphon the free-run juice directly into barrels. The rest they pour gently into an air-diaphragm press. As the pressure slowly increases, to as much as 15 psi, they taste the juice until the astringency hits the limit of the tannins they want in their wines. The rest – sometimes as much as 25 percent of the juice – goes down the drain. Twenty months or so of oak, and voila… elegant, complex and delightfully balanced wines.

Most of their fruit is still sourced from Red Mountain, although they continue to blend grapes from notable vineyards like Pepperbridge in Walla Walla and Alder Ridge in the Horse Heaven Hills. But as their estate vineyard matures, more and more of it is showing up in their bottles. Most of the fruit finds its way into their Murray Cuvee, a welcoming and approachable blend named for their dog. In fact, the 2007 Murray is 100 percent estate wine. And with the 2008 vintage they bottled their first estate Syrah. They priced it at $20, putting it in the same entry-level category as the Murray Cuvee, a move that turned out to be brilliant in the tough economy of the last two years. Many wineries, especially those (like Hightower) focusing on higher price points, suffered huge hits during the recession. Kelly reports that Hightower Cellars’ sales stayed level, even though their volume increased. Apparently their fans were happy to stock up on Murray Cuvee, and experiment with the Syrah at the same time.

The Hightowers opened a new tasting room at the winery a few years ago, making it easier to keep regular hours for the public. And that’s important. Hightower produces a bare 2,200 cases of wine a year, and sells a lot of it to select restaurants in the Seattle area, including El Gaucho, Boat Street and Lola’s. It’s available in retail outlets around the Northwest, as well as in Arizona and New York. The remainder is sold at the winery, and it’s well worth the trip to get them. Prices range from $20 for the Murray Cuvee and Murray Syrah up to $50 for the Red Mountain Blend.

Veggie tales

It’s asparagus season in Eastern Washington. This is truly a cause for celebration. There is no finer vegetable than a tender, slender stalk of asparagus. Throughout spring and early summer we eat it almost every day. I buy it fresh at the local farmer’s stand, just hours out of the ground, and store it upright in a vase with an inch or two of water. It actually makes a lovely bouquet, and reminds me all day how lucky we are to live in such bountiful corner of the world.

I learned how to cook asparagus from my mother. She taught me one way and one way only to prepare it. First, you break off the tough end of each individual stalk by grasping it in two hands and gently bending it until you find the sweet spot, where it easily snaps; too flexible and you’re trying to break off the tender, tasty part, too rigid and you haven’t eliminated enough of the woody base. Then you toss it in a sauté pan with an inch or so of water, cover it and steam it on the stove top for three to five minutes, until the asparagus is bright green, tender and flavorful. Mom always added butter to her vegetables. I throw in a little lemon juice along with it. Delicious.
However, as in so many areas of life, it turns out there is more than one way to cook asparagus. I have several friends who drizzle it with olive oil and a little garlic, roast it in the oven or on a grill, and sprinkle it with freshly grated parmesan or romano cheese. This is delicious, and it sounds simple, doesn’t it? But I screw it up every time. I always seem to end up with the charred and shriveled remnants of my fresh pick. I’m much safer steaming, but even that method can be adapted and changed. I love asparagus cold – steamed for just three minutes, until it’s still a little crisp, then plunged into icy water to stop the cooking process. Served with a dip of mayonnaise and lemon juice, it disappears in a blink of an eye.
Another favorite around these parts is pickled asparagus. This, too, is delicious, and many people pickle their own, although I’m not a big enough fan to take on a project like that. The brine adds a nice little zing, and it’s a tasty way to eat asparagus all year long, but I don’t love it enough to put that kind of time into it. Besides, there are lots and lots of local producers who sell pickled asparagus. You’ll find it at many wineries in their tasting rooms, and at specialty food shops all over the Northwest.
My latest asparagus experiment was a huge success, and extremely simple. But it took me a little while to work up the nerve to try it. Remember, I was raised to believe there is one way and one way only to prepare asparagus, so naturally it follows that there is only one way to eat it – with a thick steak, some fresh-baked crusty bread and a hearty glass of Cabernet. It’s comfort food. Anything else is kind of, well, crazy. But it is spring, the winds are blowing around the hills, tugging caution and the habits of years along with them, and somehow making me a little adventurous. So the other night I took a fresh bunch of asparagus, trimmed each stalk by hand and used my favorite method of steaming, but instead of my old stand-by of lemon butter, I boldly tossed the shoots with some hot chili sesame oil, then sprinkled them with sesame seeds for extra flavor. Delicious, a spicy alternative to the usual, and really tasty paired with garlic shrimp, angel hair pasta and a lovely white wine.

And that’s the really wild part – the wine. I am a red-meat-loving, red-wine-drinking kind of girl. I don’t dislike white wines, per se, but I usually find myself working to finish a glass. But the spicy asparagus dish along with shrimp just screamed for a lighter bottle, so I pulled out a Chateau de l’Aulnaye Muscadet Sevre et Maine, a gift from a French friend who spends a lot of time trying to convince me that French wines outshine our Washington vintages. In a head-to-head tasting between this bottle and a Washington Viognier, I don’t know which would prevail, and it doesn’t really matter. I get tired, so very tired, of reading commentaries on wine that try to pit one style against another. I don’t think a smack-down between regions or countries or even varieties does anything good for wine. But I do know that the Muscadet was delightful. The pineapple and citrus flavors were gentle, smooth and soft, probably enhanced by the low alcohol content of only 12 percent. It made a very pleasant backdrop to a delicious meal. And isn’t that what wine is supposed to do? So for this meal, vive la France. And in the future, I’ll be sipping whites with a whole new outlook.

Where to begin?


The wine business is a funny critter. It’s not enough to make a great product. You also have to sell it, and that’s not as easy as one might think. Friendly people who love to drink wine are plentiful. Getting them to your bottle is another story.



That’s why wine makers spend so much time and energy on their tasting rooms. Many of the finest vintners around specialize in small lots of handcrafted wines, and their products aren’t readily available in retail outlets. They depend on face-to-face relationships with their customers. That often means personally delivering cases of wines to select restaurants or wine shops, but it also means getting to personally know their fans.


Many of Washington’s finest wines are found only at the source, so wine tasting here is big business. But with around 600 wineries in Washington state, you have to choose a starting point. Woodinville and the Seattle area are buzzing, and lots of wineries open tasting rooms there to take advantage of the tourism infrastructure. With plenty of hotels and restaurants, Woodinville is a great place to start on a tour of Washington’s finest tasting rooms. But if you’d rather discover wines where they’re made, or at least near the vineyards that give them life, you’re going to have to work a little harder.

Take Red Mountain, for example. This tiny AVA (around 4,000 acres total, with only 700 under production) is one of Washington’s smallest. But its wines are tremendous. Huge. Gorgeous, powerful, awe-inspiring. And, by some measures, smack dab in the middle of nowhere. You gotta come.


Red Mountain juts 5,890 feet out of the dusty, arid landscape of eastern Washington. It lies 207 miles east of Seattle, 66 miles east of Yakima, and 14 miles west of Richland. The nearest burg is Benton City, population 2,964, home of a few small restaurants, a print shop or two, a nursery, a few orchards, and not much else. The mountain is dotted with small homes and acreages scattered among stretches of still-undeveloped desert, and seven or eight wineries that call it home, including such stellar producers as Fidelitas, Col Solare, Hedges Cellars and Terra Blanca. Kiona Vineyards reigns as one of the oldest producers in the area, and newcomers like Hightower Cellars and Taptiel Vineyards are turning heads with some blockbuster vintages. With only a handful of wineries there, you can tour Red Mountain in a day or maybe two, depending on how much you want to concentrate into the experience. Washington winemakers pride themselves on the down-to-earth experience you’ll get at their tasting rooms. You won’t always find the winemaker on premise (Fidelitas owner Charlie Hoppes, for example, shares his talents as a consulting winemaker with a long list of Washington producers, and he can be hard to pin down) but knowledgeable staff in the tasting rooms have a wealth of information to share. Weekends are your best bet – Hightower and Taptiel, for example, have limited hours in their tasting rooms, as does Hedges Cellars.


And don’t let the isolated location dissuade you. The nearby Tri-Cities of Richland, Pasco and Kennewick comprise a healthy metropolitan area of some 120,000 people, with plenty of hotels. The restaurant scene leans heavily toward national chains, but a few spots offer some interesting atmosphere and dining. Carmine’s, in Kennewick, serves homestyle Italian dinners and is a local favorite. Monterossa’s, housed in a railroad car incongruously parked in a city parking lot in Richland, features delicious and original pastas, along with a nice wine list. And Anthony’s, hugging the shore of the Columbia River in a building designed to take full advantage of the views, serves a deep menu of fresh seafood.


But the real excitement is on the mountain. It’s a great starting point for some of Washington’s finest wines.