Perched above the "Wallula Gap," the vineyards of the Horse Heaven Hills along the mighty Columbia River, comprise some of the finest --and certainly the most unusual-- terrior in the world of noble grapes. The dramatic placement of amorphous vineyards right at the edge of a Grand Canyon-like cliff is arresting for sure. But more likely, for the wine drinker, the secret to this great appellation might have something to with the fact that this enormous crevice in the earth is the geological opposite of the Grand Canyon 2000 miles to the south.
This canyon, The Gorge as they call it here, was not formed over thousands of years of slow erosion, but was the result of a single event at the end of the last ice age. An ice dam, the size of Long Island, broke loose in Montana and unleashed the Missoula Floods upon the entire eastern half of Washington State carving out huge holes in the ground, filling them with debris and leaving the gorge in its wake. It all took place in a few hours.
So perhaps it's the alluvial deposits miles deep of basalt and what-not collected by the flood that make for such compelling Cabernets, Syrahs and Nebbiolos here. The terrior lovers, just to the east in Walla Walla and perhaps bitter because of their relative lack of such lovely palisades in the region, and the cultish vino chemists to the north in the Red Mountain AVA, who are quick to note the lack of limestone here at Wallula, could be right. It might simply be the view that makes these grapes so flavorful.
What they don't tell you in those nearby AVAs, and I note here the amnesia that persists about their cruel, cruel winters, is that they all own and source fruit from vineyards here. You know, "Just in case we have a freeze, or something."
—Owen
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