Wine events come in all shapes and sizes, and last weekend Seattle hosted one of the biggest annual wine and food events in the Northwest, Taste Washington. This was my first time to attend Taste Washington, and I spent the majority of the day Saturday serving guest some of Chef Frank Magana’s mind blowingly delicious goodies. The Chorizo Stuffed Prawns wrapped in prosciutto that sent aromatic vapors of spicy sausage and crustaceans wafting into my face all day taunted me throughout the event, and I will admit to succumbing to temptation a few times to sneak off and throw back a couple of the delectable prawns.

For all of the great wines that the event had, and there were some great ones, my favorite part of any big event is the people that I get to spend time with. I really didn’t have a lot of time to taste wine as I was feverishly serving epicurean delights, so the opportunity to spend time with some great people was an even bigger part of the experience. Working with Chef Magana and his wife Tricia is always a fantastic experience. Tricia and I worked frenziedly trying to keep up with the rush of people there to taste the beautiful Almond Crusted Salmon with Mango Salsa, the afore-mentioned prawns, and the Crazy for Cabernet cupcakes from D’Vine Cupcakes.

Following the show on Saturday, I went out for a great dinner at Poquito’s Mexican Food with my good friend Drew Lazorchak. Drew was at the show demoing his great bottle-top aerator, the Soiree. I enjoyed some delicious ceviche and a cerveza while catching up with Drew. The ambiance at Poquito’s was a great setting for visiting with friends, and they have a really interesting menu of cocktails (which I will talk a bit more about in a minute.)

Sunday I worked in the Alexandria Nicole Cellars tasting room in Woodinville. The tasting room in the Hollywood Schoolhouse is one of my favorite tasting rooms in Woodinville, so working there was a wonderful experience. I have also decided that there needs to be a game made of finding all of the various occurrences of our iconic “A” logo around the tasting room. The logo is creatively displayed in a variety of different mediums, and the overall feel of the room is tastefully eclectic.

After finishing up the day in the tasting room, I met back up with the gang at Taste to help with loading up the van with all of our equipment, and then headed out for drinks with friends. Frank, Tricia and I met up at Jimmy’s with Victor Palencia, head winemaker at Jones of Washington, who was recently named Wine Press Northwests winery of the year for 2012, and Shane Collins from Tsillan Cellars. Getting to hang out with some great winemakers is always a treat, and Shane and Victor are also two of the nicest guys that I have met in the industry. Victor is remarkably humble for a guy who just lead a winery to being named winery of the year. Victor shared some of his delicious Sauvignon Blanc with us, as well as a yet-to-be-released Malbec that seems destined to grow up to be another fantastic wine. As a side-note, if you find yourself at Jimmy’s, you MUST try their Calamari Fries, which might well be the best squid I’ve ever stuck in my face hole.

Following our drinks with the young gun winemakers, we made our way to Revel for dinner with our friends Sean Sullivan, of Washington Wine Report fame, and Annie Hong. Although I always enjoy meeting new friends, meeting up with old ones always feels a bit like coming home. Sean and I have been friends since we met at the 2010 Wine Bloggers’ Conference in Walla Walla, and Annie is quite possibly one of the warmest and kindest people on the face of the planet. It is hard to imagine a better experience than enjoying great food and wine with friends, and Revel offers fantastic “Urban-style Korean comfort food”, some good wine pairing options, and a great aesthetic, which only leaves you to take care of the friend part.

Although fatigue was starting to set in after an already full weekend of activity, I decided to meet up again with Drew, who had returned to Poquito’s with a group of Seattle wine and food aficionados, lead by journalist Chris Nishiwaki, SIP Northwest Publisher Kristin Ackerman, and Seattle’s Best Restaurants founder Stacee Edwards. There were a number of intriguing items on the cocktail list at Poquito’s, but I chose the Black Tea & Lychee Caipirinha, which turned out to be a great decision, as the black tea turned out to be a wonderful fit for the spirits and lychee. My stay at Poquito’s was short-lived, and we quickly set out for my new favorite bar, Canon.

To begin, Canon is absolutely silly with atmosphere. When you walk into the bar you feel like you are walking through a time portal and are being transported into a classic speakeasy. The fine spirits that are stacked to the rafters behind the bar serve as the palate that mixologist Jamie Boudreau paints his libation masterpieces with. I enjoyed a truffle bourbon drink that was beyond divine. When you go in, do yourself the favor of telling Jamie to surprise you. You will be glad that you did. Canon is the absolutely perfect setting for getting to know new friends and spending time with old ones, the kind of place where longterm friendships are born and grow.

Drew, Stacee, and I had such a great time that we closed the bar, which of course meant embarking on a search for some good food cart action. We ended up finding a great hotdog place, the name of which is lost in a fog of truffle bourbon and other assorted whiskey cocktails. All I know is that you can find the place outside of a Shell (or was it a 7-11?) in downtown Seattle. All of the dogs had a perplexing dollop of sour cream cream cheese (thanks to Jameson for the correction in the comments) in the middle, that somehow seemed to work with the most unlikely dog varieties. Even my German dog included the sour cream, and our experience elicited a long and innuendo-laden conversation about the cream filled dogs.

All of the best experiences in life are enhanced by sharing them with friends. With all of the great things that Taste Washington has to offer, perhaps the best is the opportunity that it provides us to spend time experiencing some of the best things in life with friends. You can wander the convention floor and taste some of the best in Washington food and wine, and then when everyone has adjourned, you can enjoy the company of interesting and fun people in one of the many fantastic restaurants and bars that Seattle has to offer. It is the perfect recipe for revelry and hedonistic bliss, and really, what more could you ask for?

For those of you who are not familiar with Alexandria Nicole Cellars, or ANC for short, they are a Washington winery with tasting room locations in Prosser and in Woodinville. The production facility and Destiny Ridge Estate Vineyard is located in the Horse Heaven Hills near Patterson. They are a boutique winery with around 10,000 cases a year of production. My history with the winery goes back to the 2010 Wine Bloggers’ Conference, where I tasted a couple of their wines and was instantly hooked. I quickly found my way to their tasting room after moving to Washington, and have continued to be one of my favorite wineries in the state. Loving the wines as I do, I was thrilled beyond words to have the opportunity to work with them, and I am very excited about the projects that we have in the works right now.

As far as the wines go, the majority are made from our estate vineyards. Destiny Ridge Vineyard has around 260 acres of grapes planted, with an incredible array of different varieties being represented. The winery produces a number of fantastic wines from Rhône varieties, including Viognier, Marsanne, Rousanne, Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvedre. They also make some blockbuster Bordeaux wines, including a blend called Destiny that is one of the nicest Bourdeaux blends that I have had in the state.

I look forward to what the future has in store for me at ANC. I am working with some fantastic people there, which makes the gig that much sweeter. I will continue to post occasional things related to the work that I am doing at ANC, but I will not be using Vinotology to shill wine. There are some fun things that I will be in the middle of that can give you some insight into the workings of a Washington winery. I will be attending Taste Washington with Alexandria Nicole Cellars at the end of the month, and I hope to see many of my WA Wine friends there.

About two weeks ago I received one of those phone calls that you never want to receive. I listened dumbly as my mother informed me that my grandfather had passed away. The news was hard to even process, as my grandfather was a man so full of life that I almost expected to find my own way into the grave before he did. His death was not something that I was prepared for.

I think I always knew that my “Pappy” would pass suddenly, having spent the days leading up to his death engaged in hard labor. I never knew my grandfather to be one to lounge around. He worked harder in his 70s and 80s than most people ever will during their life, and not because he had to. I honestly don’t think that there was anything in life that he enjoyed more than a hard day’s work. That isn’t to say that my grandfather didn’t know how to have fun. Despite working harder than anyone that I have ever known, he also pursued his hobbies with equal gusto. For most of my life I can remember him taking annual pilgrimages across the country to go fishing in various locals, often deciding spur-of-the-moment to embark on a trip to go flounder fishing.

When I first saw the Dos Equis commercials featuring a man alleged to be “The most interesting man in the world”, I always felt that my grandfather could give him a run for his money. Pappy grew up dirt poor, in the most literal sense possible. He grew up farming in central Texas, living in a small house with a dirt floor. With all the determination that poverty can breed in a young man, he managed to finish among the top of his high school class, despite missing a significant amount of class time to work on the family farm. There was nothing more important to him than education; he knew that it was his ticket to a better life for himself and his family. The same drive that got him through high school got him through a stint in the Air Force and a college degree.

Stories of the following years of my grandfather’s life are made up of a mixture of verifiable facts and yarns with the bouquet of “big fish”. The two elements are often too tightly intertwined to tell truth from fiction, but always have enough verisimilitude to be believable. Here are some of the facts:

Fact – My grandfather worked in the oil business for Champion Chemicals and became the head of their international sales division.

Fact – During his time with Champion, my grandfather traveled all over the world, and specifically spent a great deal of time in the Middle East.

Fact – These travels lead my grandfather to develop friendships with a number of foreign dignitaries, including the royal families of several Middle Eastern countries.

Beneath these facts dwell a bevy of unverifiable tales, most of which I have no reason to doubt. Pappy would tell us stories about landing in one of the many Muslim countries that he would routinely visit, and his plane would be stopped by a Rolls Royce owned by a ruling prince prior to reaching the gate so that he could be whisked off the plane to deliver a gift of a ham sandwich and a bottle of Scotch. He would talk about meeting a young Saddam Hussein, who even then seemed a little “off” to him. He also claimed to have inadvertently invented the leisure suit when he visited a tailor in Europe and handed a design for a suit that was based on a safari getup, but that could be worn with a tie in casual situations. It just so happened that his plane ride to Paris coincided with a gaggle of designers traveling to a fashion show, and he swears that within a year he was seeing variations on his suit everywhere. With all of the other improbable things that happened in my grandfather’s life, I almost believe even the unlikely leisure suit story.

My grandfather wasn’t perfect. He possessed that racism that is common among members of his generation from the South. I can remember watching Cowboys games with him when I was a kid, and him informing me that Randall Cunningham would never win a championship because there had never been a black man smart enough to play quarterback in the NFL. He was also opinionated to a fault, which I am quite certain lead certain locals to tag him a “son’ bitch.” Despite these faults, he was a hard man to dislike, or to not respect. He was a wise man, a shrewd business person, and extremely generous.

When I look at the person that I have become, many of the best parts of my character are part of a heritage that I received from my grandfather. He taught me that anything worth doing is worth doing with all you can muster. He taught me the value of chasing what is really important to you, and not being denied when you set out to achieve your dreams. Most importantly, he taught me the value of family. When I think about the fact that I will never see him in this world again, I certainly feel the grief that is common in these situations, but I also realize that I carry him with me everywhere I go. With every dream that I achieve, goal that I accomplish, and day’s work that I complete, my Pappy will live on.

Winemaking has always had romance on its side. The image of the winemaker with the sexy accent diligently tending the vineyard and taking the fruit of his labor to create exquisite wines that evoke the place where the grapes were grown has been ingrained in us through the centuries. The passion of the artisan producing his or her labor of love is something that is easy for us to grasp onto, and it is a part of the story that we want to believe wholeheartedly. We want to believe in the family owned winery that has been passed down through the generations and has been tended with the most extreme care. The image is so strong that it has even carried through into science fiction, with Captain Picard going back to the family vineyard in France when he visits earth. This image is something that we want to hold onto, and there is certainly an element of truth in this picture, but it is not the whole truth.

In a sense, making wine has always been about chemistry. That doesn’t mean that winemakers have always been expert chemists, but the process of making wine is all about chemical reactions. The complexities of these reactions may not have always been fully understood on the level that modern winemakers understand them, but the process of taking fruit and transforming sugar into alcohol is very much a scientific exercise.

As our world has changed, the degree to which winemakers are actually chemists has become more pronounced. Wines are manipulated today on a chemical level that the winemakers of the past would have never dreamed. Some of this change in the landscape is decidedly for the better, while other aspects are more debatable. Wineries today will always feature a lab, where various tests are conducted on the wine to determine what steps need to be made to give the wine the character that they desire, and to ensure that the quality of the wine is up to the winemaker’s standards. As the level of science in the wine world has increased, so has the overall quality of wine around the world. There are downsides as well, but it is hard to argue that the act of making wine has not benefited from modern science and technology.

I have never really been the most practical of people, and my imagination gravitates towards the romantic rather than the scientific. That romantic ideal of the winemaker speaks to my soul in a way that SO2 additions never could. As I have learned more about the wine world, I have started to really appreciate the beauty that is created by the synergy between art and science. The dichotomy between art and science in winemaking is a false one. The science is the art, and the art is science. The act of making wine tells a story, a story that contains many different facets. From the soil where the grapes are grown, to the struggle of the vines to produce fruit, and finally to the process that the winemaker goes through to craft a final product that they can be proud of; every element of the journey is present in the bottle that you drink with your friends and family, and we become a part of that same story.

Regardless of how you feel about the degree to which winemaking has become a science, the simple fact is that without science there would be no wine. Strip away the scientific side of the equation and you are left with a guy in a beret playing with his grapes. I love the fact that winemakers are the unique mix between science and art. They are artisans and they are scholars, and thanks to their ability to meld the right brain and the left, we are able to enjoy one of life’s greatest pleasures.

When I was in high school my family came to the Northwest to visit my grandparents. I was living in Denver at the time, and my grandparents were living in a little retirement community in Port Ludlow, which is in the Seattle area. We did some touristy stuff while we were here, including a visit to one of the most breathtaking vistas that I have seen in the state, Snoqualmie Falls. When I saw the place, I immediately thought that it looked familiar. After a little research, I discovered that the waterfall was actually the waterfall that was in the beginning credits of the show Twin Peaks. I ended up going down the rabbit hole and discovered that there were Northwest connections all over the place with the show. Not only was the show filmed in the Northwest, but Kyle McLaughlin was from Yakima, Washington.

Since that time, my obsession with the show Twin Peaks and its many Northwest connections has only grown. The fact that McLaughlin started his own wine label just gives me another thing to obsess about. Since I moved to Washington around a year and half ago I have constantly entertained the thought that I might just run into Kyle McLaughlin at the Jimgermanbar in Waitsburg and he would invite me to join him for a drink.

This fantasy has begun to work its way into my dreams now, as last night I dreamt that I received an invitation from Mr. McLaughlin to do an interview and taste some of his wine (which I haven’t had yet). It turns out that in my dream world, Kyle McLaughlin religiously reads my blog. As the saying goes, “All men are great in their dreams.” Of course, when I arrived at the tasting, the room was a full-on David Lynch fever dream, with crushed red velvet curtains, antique sofas, and Michael J. Anderson greeting me at the door. When I finally met the man himself, I told him how much I loved Twin Peaks, Dune, Blue Velvet, and Desperate Housewives (well, one lie couldn’t hurt anything; I’ve never seen Desperate Housewives.) He told me that he was a big fan of my blog, and that he wished I would bring back The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The tasting in the dream was fairly uneventful, except for the fact that Michael J. Anderson kept offering me a stick of gum between glasses.

As is often the case when awakening from a dream, I kept asking myself what it all meant. I think I have it all figured out though. What my subconscious is trying to tell me is, I need to figure out a way to meet Kyle McLaughlin. It isn’t really so farfetched. I do hear that he is in the area fairly often, so it’s not impossible that I would actually run into him somewhere. I am also sending this out into the universe, via the power of the internet, so maybe it will find him and a meeting will be arranged. What could be more awesome for a blog post than an interview with Kyle McLaughlin about wine? The answer, my friends, is “absolutely nothing.” In the meantime, I have seen some of his wine in the Wild Walla Walla Wine Woman store, so maybe I will have to satisfy myself for the time being with tasting the wine. Hopefully it will be awesome, so that I can say “That is some damn good wine.”

If consciousness is a disease, than being a nerd is a terminal disease. There is no cure for the chronic obsessiveness that plagues us nerds. Every aspect of my life is consumed with some element of obsession. I have always lived by the credo that, “Anything worth being interested in is worth being too interested in.” My nerdism has manifested itself in numerous ways over the years, ranging from the classic examples of nerd culture, such as Star Trek or The Lord of the Rings, to things that are more culturally universal, such as music and sports. Once I hit legal drinking age (of course it didn’t happen before it was legal), I added beer and eventually wine to my list of obsessions.

Most nerds don’t even realize that they really are nerds. Those of us who have spent countless hours discussing Battlestar Galactica and Comic Books have always been aware of, and been constantly reminded of, our nerdom. The truth is that our entire culture has slowly and covertly become a nerd culture. The millions of people in America who play fantasy football are clearly nerds, despite the “jock” nature of their nerdiness. The surge in popularity of films featuring comic book heroes and science fiction or fantasy themes has even pushed traditional nerd culture into the societal norm. Even the rabid fandom that follows reality television shows like American Idol and Survivor are indicative of classic nerd behavior. Within the wine community there is also a large contingent of nerds, people whose livelihood in no way requires that they know what malolactic fermentation is, but who still study the geekier elements of the winemaking process. Nerds.

Add to this nerd disease a web of nerdy codependency, and the affliction becomes completely incurable. I have a group of friends who all work in the Washington wine industry, people who I will do the service of not sharing their names in case they have not fully outed themselves as nerds. We got together for a beer (or three) recently, and the entire evening was like one big orgy of nerdiness. We started out talking about wine and local wineries that we have visited recently, got into the crazy people that we know in the wine industry, moved on to discussing the Walking Dead, kept right on trucking to the topic of comic books, and finally finished the evening on a debate of the merits of Star Trek: The Next Generation (or TNG for us nerds) vs. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9). This, my droogies (random literary reference), is what heaven looks like for the versatile nerd.

In my own case, my wine nerdism is just another manifestation of a pattern of obsession that has plagued me since I was a child. Some people are able to isolate their nerd tendencies a bit more than I do. I am a lost cause, but some of you have a chance to live a fairly normal life. Being a wine nerd can be a valuable disease to have. You will probably be asked often for wine and food pairing advice or for recommendations about local wineries to visit. People will depend on you to explain what a “Meritage” is, and you will be able to first correct their pronunciation and then proceed to inform them about what it is. If you are a skilled nerd, you will start to understand when people really want to talk about wine and when they wish for nothing more than for you to shut up about it. All of these social boons can be yours if you learn to control your disease.

Despite the many downsides to consciousness, most people would admit that they think that the benefits outweigh the negatives. I feel the same way about nerdiness. Sure, my obsessive nature can get the best of me sometimes, but I also get more joy out of my interests than I would if my interest were more casual. I sometimes enter an ecstatic state just enjoying the nose on a wine, something that can lead me to spend ten minutes just sniffing a glass without so much as sipping the wine. These moments make all of the downsides to my obsession seem insignificant, and it is in them that I find myself thinking, “Damn, it feels good to be a nerd.”

For my 40 days I will be continuing to post on this blog, although I will probably not post every day. Despite what yesterdays post might lead you to believe, I am attempting to focus more on quality of posts than frequency here. My goal on Vinotology is going to be to post things that I can actually be proud of, so that will likely mean that I only post a couple of times a week. In addition to my blog, I have been working on starting another blog project that I will be launching soon, so some of my writing efforts will go into that. I am also working on writing a novel, and have been writing for a regional magazine as well. Between all of these I should be able to keep on churning out some writing every day over the next 40 days.

If you are interested in joining in this project, you can visit the Facebook page here. We are starting today, but if you don’t see this until later, don’t let that stop you from joining in. This is a really exciting project that will increase the creative output in the world, which is a good thing.

We all have our own things that turn us on. Some guys are leg guys, and some are ass guys. Me, I’m a Syrah guy. Okay, so Syrah and Pinot Noir, but my Pinot fixation is a topic for another day. There is something about Syrah that strikes at the most primal part of my nature. My method for judging Syrah is a simple one, I just wait to see how long my erection lasts after I smell the wine.

When I first decided to move from my home in West Texas, my Syrah fetish might have been a big factor in choosing Washington as my new home. Prior to the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference, I had heard reports on Twitter of how great Washington Syrah was from my friends Josh Wade and Clive Pursehouse, so I was already looking forward to getting my Syrah freak on before I hit the ground. I pretty much spent the whole trip channeling the Ken Marino character Louie (from The State), announcing that “I want to dip my balls in it!” There is definitely a lot of fantastic Syrah in Washington, but not all Syrah is created equal.

Time has a way of refining obsession. While I started my love affair with Syrah early on, over time I started to realize that there were some very specific versions of Syrah that really got me going. Syrah is a variety that can vary wildly in its expression. In a recent Twitter conversation with Trey Busch of Sleight of Hand Cellars (@SofHCellars), we discussed the fact that this could possibly be one of the factors that has damaged the market for Syrah. People might have been turned off by a specific style of Syrah (often Aussie Shiraz is credited for this), or they might just have a problem with the inconsistency of the wines that they taste over time.

For me, the nose of Syrah is a big factor on whether it meets my priapism test. I am always on the hunt for an earthy, meaty Syrah that is not over the top on the jam and alcohol. I recently received a sample from my friend Tamara Belgard at Cana’s Feast Winery in Carlton, Oregon that hit on these notes perfectly. The 2008 Syrah is produced from fruit from Washington’s Horse Heaven Hills AVA. I brought a second bottle to our local Brown Bag Wine Night blind tasting, and even blind I ended up picking it as one of my favorites. The dark fruit, savory meat components, and herbal notes on the wine hit on exactly the notes that I have come to love in a Syrah. The other wine that stood out at that tasting was the 2008 Columbia Valley Syrah from Market Vineyards. I tweeted that “I would make sweet, passionate love to wine number 23.” There is something slightly funky about my favorite Syrah, which means that the wines tend to be very polarizing. The Market Vineyards Syrah seemed to either be a favorite or a least favorite at the tasting. It did turn out to be one of the top wines of the night when the votes were counted though.

Syrah can be one of the most elegant and sexy grapes on the planet. It can also be a bombastic fruit avalanche that leaves you desperate for escape. All of these expressions of the grape make me think of my relationships with various women over the years. Maybe this is why I am so attracted to the variety. The desire to anthropomorphize manifests itself with Syrah in a way that few other varieties can. I find Syrah to be deep with personality and character, with each example having its own unique expression. It does have typicity, but is heavily influenced by the climate of the vineyards it was grown in, and also to the caprices of the winemaker. It is always interesting, and when it is done right it makes me want to dip my balls in it.

Sucking down a cancer stick has become more and more frowned upon in society as a whole, but it has an added scorn among the wine community, and with good reason. I am quite certain that nobody who smokes is under the mistaken impression that it is anything but the vilest of habits. It is a stinky, unhealthy, expensive and generally disgusting thing to do, yet the nicotine nation continues to puff away with abandon. I always get a nice surge of guilt after a cigarette; you know, that post-masturbation kind of guilt.

Just to get this on the record, my smoking has been an on-again, off-again foible that is generally revitalized by negative changes in my environment. I have had long periods of not smoking, interrupted by the onset of stressful situations. When I was laid off recently, I found myself picking it up again – a counterintuitive leap if ever there was one, given that my income had just experienced a significant drop. I am a fairly light smoker, never topping out at more than five or six cigs a day. I have had a field day psychoanalyzing myself (dangerous, I know) to explore the deeper nature of the more addictive aspects of my personality in the light of my smoking habits.

There is a special brand of disdain that we smokers feel among our wine friends. When I was in Napa over a year ago, I had a group of smoker friends with whom I would periodically abscond to “take a walk,” a euphemism that fooled no one. Many of them work in the wine industry, which is a very tightly knit community. Everyone desperately wanted to avoid having their habit become public knowledge. The desire to keep our vice hidden meant that the smokers’ ghettos that now exist in most cities were not hidden enough for us, and necessitated taking a real walk prior to taking our euphemistic one. I guess the bright side is that it meant that we got some additional exercise, but I couldn’t help but feel like I was perpetrating a major social crime every time I wanted to grab a square.

There are some very real reasons why cigarettes and wine don’t go together. The effects of smoking on your ability to accurately evaluate wine can be fairly significant. Not only does it make it more difficult for the choker to analyze wine, they also carry that lovely aroma with them on their clothes to share with everyone else. It is more than a little challenging to get a read on the nose of a wine when everything smells like the Marlboro Man (or in my case, the American Spirit Indian.) It is no wonder that lighting up before going into a tasting will lead to scornful looks from your fellow tasters. I would hate me too.

For some reason, the disdain for smoking has not made its way as deeply into the restaurant culture as it has the wine world. The same negative effects on the palate exist with food as with wine, but an above average number of chefs admit to being regular smokers. Anthony Bourdain, one of the world’s most famous food personalities, is an unrepentant smoker. Bourdain was quoted in a 2007 Time magazine article as saying, “I’m amused by food nerds who say, ‘I’d never eat at a restaurant where the chef smokes.’ Almost all the chefs I know smoke. … I don’t want to encourage anyone to quit smoking. In my experience, it really does make you cool.” The enduring rockstar image of chefs within the restaurant community might explain why the stigma has not made the same inroads within the food world as it has for winos.

I can’t say for certain that this “rockstar” image doesn’t play into my habit. I am not consciously aware of trying to “look cool” when I smoke, but I have always been attracted to the types of figures who would be more likely to smoke. Most of my writing heroes tend to fall onto the Anthony Bourdain and Hunter S. Thompson side of the spectrum rather than the one occupied by Robert Parker. I cut my teeth on punk rock music and Tom Waits, so I guess I should consider myself lucky to not be putting anything worse into my system than nicotine. No amount of anti-smoking ads that draw comparisons between smokers and monkeys will ever be able to replace the image of how cool James Dean looked with a cigarette.

I would like to say that this post serves to announce that I am quitting smoking and that I will never light up again, but I have to admit that this is unlikely to be the case. I know that I should give it up, but I also know that I don’t always do the things I should. I have resigned myself to the fact that I will continue to feel guilty and ostracized for engaging in a behavior that I recognize as unpleasant and unhealthy. I do believe that one day I will give up the habit for good, and I actually hope that the day comes soon. In the meantime, you can find me with my friends in the smokers’ ghettos of America, which are ultimately social prisons of our own making.

Cities can age ungracefully as well. I have often been depressed to make my way through the derelict city square of a once charming downtown. The stories are different for every town; Big box stores clear out all of the local businesses that once occupied the area, or a steady exodus to a larger town caused the area to just dry up and no longer be able to support the businesses. No matter the cause, it is always disheartening to see.

Amidst this sea of desiccated towns, Walla Walla has always stood out to me as a bastion against the unflinching march of modernity. When I first visited the area two years ago, I immediately fell in love with the place. The downtown area has that Mayberry type of charm. It is the kind of place that you visit and instantly feel like community is still alive in America, if you choose to look for it.

My friend William Pollard (who writes the Wild 4 Washington Wine blog) and I left early Friday morning in search of a few bottles of Blacksmith Syrah from Forgeron Cellars (which you can read about on William’s blog.) William had been in contact with the winery, and part-owner and winemaker Marie-Eve Gilla was kind enough to personally give us a tour and tasting at the winery.

Forgeron is a great example of the way that Walla Walla has embraced its history. The name of the winery is taken from the French word for “blacksmith”, and is a reference to the fact that the winery is positioned on the site of a former blacksmith shop in Walla Walla. Before they built on the site, the owners found hundreds of horseshoes, which they buried in the foundation for good luck. There is a romance to the image of the skilled artisan blacksmith wielding his hammer to create something that has utility. The name was purposely chosen to call attention to the artisanal nature of the winemaking process.

Marie-Eve Gilla is originally from Paris, and in talking with her it is clear that she is acutely aware of the importance of preserving history. She has the European perspective on history that differs so wildly from the view that most Americans possess. She told us that one of the things that she loves about Walla Walla is that they have done a good job of maintaining the heritage of the area. As a winemaker, you can gather that this perspective spreads to her craft. In her winemaker bio she is quoted as saying, “My wines have a sense of place. They reflect their terroir, which is a composite of the vine location and the grower dedication.” Anyone who spent a few minutes talking to Marie-Eve would be infused with the same passion for terroir and history that has long been a part of the French mindset.

Although modernity can often lead to the destruction of the more traditional elements of a location, this is not always the case. Our next stop was a wonderful example of a modern winery that has had an additive effect to the culture of the area. It is hard to imagine a more modern winery than Long Shadows Vintners. The winery takes an innovative approach to winemaking that involves the creation of multiple micro-wineries under the umbrella of a single facility. They produce Washington wines with several international partner winemakers. The results are extraordinary wines that are expressive of some of Washington’s finest fruit, but that are created by some of the world’s most renowned winemakers. The facility itself is a testament to modernity, from the beautiful Chihuly glass that adorns the tasting room, to the varied state of the art winemaking tools that are used in production. The building can be seen as a metaphor of what the winery is doing. The building is an ultra-modern rectangular building with large amounts of glass that is dramatically set within the natural contours of the bucolic landscape. There is something about the scene that speaks of the modern world playing nicely with the natural.

Even with its starkly modern approach to winemaking, Long Shadows still acknowledges a historical perspective. The name even references a look towards the past. The winery is creating something new here in Washington, and is doing so by incorporating some of the people who have cast long shadows within the wine world. The key to their amazing wines seems to be the respect that this group of international winemakers give to the “Washingtonness” of the fruit. All of the wines feel like beautiful expressions of Washington grapes, rather than overly manipulated wines that speak more about the winemaker than the place.

From the very modern Long Shadows Vintners, we worked our way to one of the most historic wineries in Washington State. The image of L’Ecole 41’s iconic schoolhouse tasting room has been a part of the Washington wine world for almost 30 years. Until recently, the wine labels had all featured an illustration of the schoolhouse, which was built in 1915. The drawing was produced by an 8 year old named Ryan Campbell as a part of a contest. Although the winery has recently updated the labels to a more “grown-up” design, there is a clear sense of reverence about the history of the winery. The new label features a painting of the classic schoolhouse. The winery acknowledges its history, but is adapting to the modern market.

It is clear that there is a love for both the winery and for the Walla Walla community when you talk with Tasting Room Manager Brandon Kubrock. The winery produces wines from both the Walla Walla AVA, and from the larger Columbia Valley AVA. Tasting through these wines, and especially their vineyard specific and estate wines, really shows their attention to letting the place find expression in the final product. You will find common threads that run through the wines from a specific location from one vintage to the next, an indication of the care that is given to preserving the terroir of the vineyard in the wines.

The preservation of an area’s history is not something that happens by accident. Left to run its course, our modern world is in a steady and consistent march toward a bigger and more centralized climate, typified by strip malls and Wal-Marts on every corner. Catie McIntyre Walker, the owner of the Wild Walla Walla Wine Woman shop in Walla Walla, told me that there was a time when the downtown area had started to thin out, with many businesses moving into the malls that were springing up around the area. Fortunately, the people of Walla Walla seem to have noticed the trend occurring in their city and took action to stem the tide. The city has managed to avoid the homogenous feel that many small towns have succumbed to by maintaining the rich history and culture of the area. In short, Walla Walla remains one of the most rewarding wine country experiences that Washington has to offer.