East Yakima
(Pop. 73,000)
Directions: I-90 east to Ellensburg, then take exit #110 onto I-82 and head east toward Yakima. Take exit #31A/US-12 west onto N First St. toward Naches. Turn on E Yakima Ave, and then eventually turn on S Second St and stop. You are now near a winery.
Upon arriving at the east side of Yakima, after a two-hour car ride with a kind companion, I started sipping wine.
The population of Yakima is 73,000, and this part of it, comprising three precincts (0101, 0120, 0126), voted overwhelmingly for Kerry in the presidential election that dealt rational humanity a cruel blow. Yakima Valley is wine country, and a few of the vintners are based here in the deepest blue for miles around.
Yakima was officially established in 1883, 30 years after the U.S. army violently forced a small Native American community to give its land to white settlers. (History calls this event, which was nothing more than robbery, the Yakima Indian Wars.) The Natives were then relocated to a reservation south of Yakima, and a space was cleared for American capital (investments, speculations, privatization) to do its thing. Farming is now the base of this region’s economy.
Yakima Valley has 300 days of sunshine, its soil is volcanic, and cool aquifers run beneath its hilly geography—which, by the way, shares the same latitude with France’s famous wine-producing provinces. Though you don’t see them when driving in from Seattle, wine grapes cover more than 11,000 acres of the region (pure heaven!), and about 30 wineries (some with international reputations) exist and thrive in the unremitting heat. According to the map I received from Yakima’s tourist center—a tiny, wooden structure with a wine barrel in front of it—there are two wineries based in the east (deep-blue) side of Yakima, one of which, Kana Winery, is at 10 South Second Street.
The woman conducting the wine-sipping in Kana, on this hot day, has about her the air of someone in exile, someone who is from a sophisticated place and is out here on the edges of civilization with nothing better to do than refine the savages. She’s not a rude person, but as she serves the samples of whites and reds you get the distinct impression that her day would be made if either I, or my companion, or any of the other visitors standing by the counter, had a command of the language of wine appreciation. My knowledge of viticulture is next to nothing, and I mostly drink cheap merlots and cabernets because that’s what I can afford. I have never had the time to become a connoisseur. However, the happiness I feel when chance presents me with a glass of good and expensive wine is a happiness that only great piano jazz (Bill Evans and early Herbie Hancock, in particular) can match.
“Kana is a new company, we opened on Thanksgiving [2004], and the owner is Dr. Palmer Wright,” says Kana’s worldly manager. She is tanned and pretty, and has one broken marriage behind her. “Dr. Wright is an ENT specialist and started the winery because it was something he and his wife, Vicky, always wanted to do,” she tells us.
“What is an ENT specialist?” asks a man who is standing by the counter with his wife. The two are from Vancouver, BC, and have spent much of the summer traveling up and down the West Coast doing pleasant things like this—wine tasting. “Ear, nose, and throat,” the manager replies, adding, “Dr. Wright is the only doctor of his kind for more than 200,000 people. And he gets very busy when there is a full moon. Once he had to go to the hospital and deal with a guy whose throat had been cut by a samurai sword. Well, at least that’s what [the patient] said to him. But what really cut him was a machete. Now, this next wine is a blend of 50 percent Mourvèdre, 40 percent Syrah, and 10 percent Counoise…”
The wine she pours is called Dark Star. It’s made from grapes from the “esteemed Elerding Vineyard.” I take three sips of it and conclude that it tastes great—that’s as much as I can get out of it. But this is how Kana’s manager describes Dark Star in the notes she hands me: “Note the inky, concentrated, glass-coating black-red color that leads you to its intensely aromatic nose of ripe dark cherry, and plum fruit, with hints of orange spice, peppered bacon, and freshly chopped tarragon. In the mouth, it reveals an extraordinary dimension of forward mouth-coating blackberry, boysenberry syrup, and plum fruit that is highlighted by subtle notes of black currant, mocha-chocolate, cumin, and dried spice.” Good lord. What I had thought to be a glass of great wine is, in actual fact, a feast. Clearly, wine writing of this kind (if there is indeed any other kind) owes a debt to the “Songs of Solomon.”
We thank her for the free samples and walk down to Yakima Cellars at 32 North Second Street. The building that houses Yakima Cellars used to be a bank and was renovated in 1997 by an architect married to the company’s general manager. The interiors are 100 percent bourgeois: hardwood floors, brick walls, and art all over the walls. The woman serving samples is young and plain. Right near her is a red bottle with a splendid medal hanging from its neck. Other honored bottles are lined on the shelf behind her. She has us taste several wines, the best of which is Viognier 2003. Sadly, there is no literature for this white wine, and so I’m limited to describing it as complex.
While sampling an average red, I learn from the host that the safe in the basement of the former bank now holds wine instead of money. “We keep a library of wine down there,” she says, and I’m immediately impressed to discover that a cellar can also be called a library. “Can I see it?” I ask with point-blank excitement. “No, I don’t think so,” she answers without annoyance.
“Why not?”
“Down there is not as pretty as it is up here.”
“That’s fine. Let me have a look. I just want to see a vault full of wine bottles. Can you imagine what would happen if a burglar broke into the basement thinking that this is still a bank? Imagine his face when he finally cracks the safe and opens the huge metal door. ‘Wine! Goddamn it! Well, let me take a few bottles for my troubles.’ Now, wouldn’t that be amazing! Please let me have a quick peek.”
“No.”
I bought a bottle of Viognier 2003 for $10 and left Yakima Cellars.
There is another winery nearby, Desert Hills, but it’s located just beyond the border of the deep-blue zone. Dinner is spent at the elegant Barrel House, which serves regional reds and whites, and we soberly leave wine town early the next morning. The sun is rising, the music in the car is soft dub, and the wind-contoured desert hills around us are majestic and ancient. Suddenly a convoy of army trucks rushes past our car. It feels like they’re heading directly to that war launched by the man who was voted into power by many of the people who live in these hot hills.
