Wine Press Northwest

Red Mountain Rising
Award, sign bode well for wine grape growing region

This story was published Aug. 18, 2002

By Mike Lee
Wine Press Northwest

BENTON CITY, Wash. - Bounded by the tranquil Yakima River on one edge and sunburned sagebrush on the other, 600 acres of wine grapes on a hill east of town is doing for Washington what Napa did for California.

Call it Red Mountain rising - rising to new heights in the wine world and raising the bar for the state's vintners.

Now if it can just turn all that top-flight wine into more water, which everyone agrees is the limiting factor for what boosters say is among the world's top wine grape regions.

Not that anyone envisions unchecked growth on Red Mountain, which offers a surprisingly intimate setting for those accustomed to the vast reaches of Eastern Washington agriculture. Just a handful of wineries. Just a handful of acres.

And a bold new limestone statement planted by the mountain's tight-knit coterie.

Right off Highway 224, a $20,000 monument gives visitors notice that they have entered the aspiring wine community of Red Mountain. It's like nothing else in Washington, but then again, so is the land it advertises.

Just ask Patricia and David Gelles, whose Klipsun Vineyards is recognized in Wine & Spirits magazine's fall issue as one of the top 25 vineyards in the world. Twenty years after they purchased the land, the Gelleses are the toast of Washington.

"I look at it not so much from the personal point of view but what it does for Red Mountain," said Patricia Gelles. "It's going to have a great impact, I hope, on people looking at Washington wines in comparison to California."

She shares enthusiasm for challenging California with most of her neighbors on the mountain, most notably Tom Hedges of Hedges Cellars. He was a major force behind the creation of the Red Mountain appellation, approved as the smallest official wine area in Washington in April 2001 after years of work to showcase the unique attributes of the mountain's grapes.

"Part of what sells wine is image," said Hedges. "On Red Mountain, you have this great opportunity for people to really get a feel for the terroir. It's the only appellation you can really get your hands around. You can see it. You know what it is. You can't do that in the Yakima Valley or in the Walla Walla Valley."

What Red Mountain offers is clearly visible from Klipsun's gazebo, where Patricia Gelles shields herself from the glaring sun that ripens her sold-out crop. Neatly sculpted vines hung with near-ripe fruit rise gently with the hill, punctuated by sometimes elegant wineries such as Hedges French-style chateau.

Hedges said his son Chris spearheaded the effort to erect the landmark sign, which went up earlier this summer and eventually will include landscaping and lighting. "This should be a tourist Mecca," Tom Hedges said. "I think it is going to create some good buzz and make people think, 'What is going on here?' "

Among other things, the answer to that question usually includes speculation that the largest maker of Washington wines, Stimson Lane, will build a Red Mountain home for Col Solare, a high-end red wine produced by Chateau Ste. Michelle and Antinori of Tuscany, Italy.

The official company line is that Red Mountain is under consideration as a site for Col Solare, "but it's not the only one," said spokesman Keith Love, who added that there was no major Red Mountain project in the Stimson Lane five-year plan.

That doesn't slow talk about potential land deals in an area where an acre with water rights can bring $30,000 and million-dollar development bills are par for the course. Property values there have jumped about tenfold in the last decade and even parcels without water can sell for $10,000 an acre.

There's little room for angst in a place so brightly gilded by success. But underneath the current of praise and hope runs concern that Red Mountain's future is held hostage by the state water master and years of uncertainty about water rights.

"We would like to see the whole of Red Mountain in grapes, but we can't dig any more wells," Gelles said.

Some viticulturists have conserved water and applied it to new vines. But otherwise, mountain dwellers essentially have fully tapped their water rights. Even the Kennewick Irrigation District, which is authorized to service 6,300 acres of mostly virgin lands in the area and owns several parcels, doesn't have a practical way to get water to the mountain.

"If we were to provide water to that area, it probably wouldn't be enough to irrigate 6,300 acres and it most certainly wouldn't come through the Chandler pumping facility (on the Yakima River)," said Chuck Garner, KID manager.

The best hope now is that the state Department of Natural Resources will find a way to transfer in water rights for about 650 acres of newly acquired property. Hedges said state land is expected to be broken into relatively small parcels to fit the nature of a boutique wine region, rather than the large-scale development of the Columbia Basin.

Should the developers ever find water for state lands, "it's really going to change the whole aspect of the mountain," Hedges said. "It's going to be vines with not much sagebrush left."