TRIP PLANNER: BELLINGHAM PG. 78
A Grays Harbor Beer Itinerary
Mouthwatering Marionberries
Wild Beauty at Palouse Falls
Coast The
HOW TO EXPLORE WASHINGTON’S WATERS SUSTAINABLY
UNCORK WASHINGTON: YOUR GUIDE TO LOCAL WINE REGIONS KITCHEN MAKEOVERS MARRY STYLE + FUNCTION VANCOUVER, BC BY BOAT, BIKE + FOOT 1889mag.com $5.95 display until September 30, 2022
LIVE
THINK
EXPLORE
WASHINGTON
August | September
volume 32
2 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2022
Take the Plunge photography by Annie Crawley FROM KAYAKING the San Juans to visiting the giant Pacific octopus, learn how to enjoy the Washington Coast sustainably with diver, videographer and ocean advocate Annie Crawley. (pg. 56)
A diver observes plumose anemones at Edmonds Underwater Park and Marine Sanctuary.
AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2022
1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE 3
mind + body
Madonna Hanna is not a stranger to the podium and sets her sights on more medals.
Life is a Sprint Madonna Hanna took a long path to finding her running passion written by Jonathan Shipley photography by Stephen Matera “IMAGINE, I WOKE UP one day with an overwhelming desire to run 100 meters,” Madonna Hanna said. “It’s a sport in which I had absolutely no prior experience.” Growing up she didn’t play sports. She watched football. She liked watching the Olympics. She played a little tennis as an adult, but being an athlete was not her path in life. As a fashion marketing teacher, she was closer to the runway than to running. One day, though, she discovered she was a good runner right out of the chute. Hanna, a resident of Tacoma, entered the Washington State Senior Games in 2011. She was 57 and had never competed before. She won the gold medal for the 100 meter. She also took home the gold for the 50 meter. She continued her running dreams and 36 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2022
mind + body
With coaching from Marcus Chambers, Hanna has become the woman to beat in the 100.
AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2022
1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE 37
The Columbia Valley AVA encompasses most of Washington’s AVAs, but also includes some of the best vineyard views of the Columbia River.
A Guide to Washington’s
Wine
Terroir Washington’s many microclimates produce various soil types behind its delicious AVAs written and photographed by Daniel O’Neil
50
1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE
AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2022
T
he desert seems an unlikely place to grow wine. Yet vineyard managers across the globe dream of such long, dry, reliable growing seasons with hot days and cool nights. Abundant irrigation water from the Columbia River and Cascade Range make this dream a reality for Washington’s AVAs, or American Viticultural Areas. With nineteen AVAs to date, Washington, the country’s second-largest wine producer, continues to grow in size and fame. Vivid with fruit and deep in color, Washington wines achieve balance with refreshing acidity, ripe tannins and defined varietal flavors. While a few AVAs exist in cooler, damper parts of the state, most lie in arid Eastern Washington where loess, a blend of fine, windblown silt and sand resulting from repeated glacial retreat, provides ideal soil. The Missoula Floods, which tore through the region between 18,000 and 15,000 years ago, added soil diversity. These soils prove naturally resistant to root-eating phylloxera mites, so vines here are ungrafted. Above ground, the Cascade Range rain shadow casts a desert climate for most of Washington’s vineyards. The lack of rain requires irrigation, but this asset gives growers fine-tuned control over ripening. Desert air also reduces the need for pesticides, which creates a naturally sustainable environment. Most importantly, the formidable swing between daily temperatures during the final months of ripening allows for flavor and tannins to develop while acidity remains sharp. Known for red and white Bordeaux and Rhone varietals and anything from tempranillo to chardonnay, plus eighty other varietals, Washington can grow almost anything. Yet winemakers prefer to craft wines using different AVAs, not varietals. “The state’s diverse AVAs let us blend multiple layers of complexity and nuance of flavors, aromas and textures, to make better wines,” said Dan Wampfler, winemaker at Abeja Winery in Walla Walla. The enormous Columbia Valley AVA serves as a catch-all for the Eastern Washington wine country and mainly covers wines blended from multiple AVAs. But the true, defining fruit of Washington wine emerges from an AVA with its own signature of character and style.
Morning sunlight catches the early-season shoots in Seven Hills vineyard, Walla Walla AVA.
Walla Walla AVA Since becoming an AVA in 1984, Walla Walla has grown to become Washington’s wine epicenter. Home to the largest concentration of wineries and to some of the most iconic vineyards in the state, nowhere in Washington feels more like wine country. Walla Walla soils vary greatly— flood silts, loess, fractured basalt, ancient river rocks—each providing a distinct flavor profile. Cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah dominate, but other varietals like cabernet franc and viognier also flourish. Vineyard locations range from northern sites overlooking the Palouse to terraces in the cooler, wetter foothills of the Blue Mountains to the east. Some lie in Missoula Flood terraces just south of town. The sloping vineyards around
Seven Hills, actually in Oregon, offer soil types that change dramatically with elevation. A new subAVA, The Rocks District, also in Oregon, has carved itself from the Walla Walla AVA because of its odd soil type, which is almost ninety percent cobblestone. More sub-AVAs will surface here, but Walla Walla maintains a common identity. “We’ve always been pretty isolated out here, so it was important from the beginning for winemakers and growers to share information, help each other out and collaborate,” said Jordan Dunn-Small, general manager and co-owner of Woodward Canyon Winery, which her parents founded in 1981. “Even as the industry has grown, we still seem able to hold onto that sense of camaraderie and collaboration.”
FROM LEFT First-rate winemaking facilities like at Abeja in Walla Walla demonstrate winemakers’ respect for Washington-grown grapes. Jordan Dunn-Small manages and co-owns Woodward Canyon, which her parents founded in 1977 before they helped create the Walla Walla AVA.
AUGUST | SEPTEMBER 2022
1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE 51