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.