TRIP PLANNER: SPOKANE PG. 86
Destination Resorts of the PNW
Elevated Wild Game Recipes
Pushing the Boundaries of Walla Walla Wine
WINTER ESCAPES CROSS-COUNTRY ADVENTURES • RELAXING SPA RETREATS • SMALL-TOWN STUNNERS
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Crossing Spokane photography by Aaron Theisen
Follow your passion, sense of adventure and history to a snow-covered Spokane. (pg. 86)
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Semiahmoo Resort on the Semiahmoo Spit brings together body relaxation and pastoral views of the Salish Sea. (photo: Semiahmoo Resort)
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Top Spas in Washington for a Holiday Retreat (or Recovery) written by Emma Giffin
HOLIDAYS ARE GREAT in small measures. When the detritus of wrapping paper has settled and the last annuals have gone back home, it’s time for self care and relaxation. There is almost no better way to hit reset for the new year than with an all-in spa retreat. These five spa resorts across Washington offer many ways to get you to that point where you feel refreshed and ready for the new year—come what may! (And if you’re looking for locally made, natural spa products, we have recommendations for those, too.)
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drive up the Walla Walla River feels like a detour from that area’s world-famous vineyards. Canyon walls quickly build into dark rock outcroppings as the Blue Mountains draw nearer. Ponderosa pines begin to take hold on the ridgelines where bears, cougars and rattlesnakes roam. Along the road, cattle graze, apples grow and there’s not a vine in sight until the elevation reaches 1,300 feet. Then begins the future of Walla Walla wine. Christophe Baron’s Hors Catégorie vineyard appears like a fantasy, sculpted into busted-up basalt slopes too steep for tractors, syrah with a Wild West backdrop. A turn up the South Fork leads to a valley-floor vineyard, the oldest one here. But continuing up the North Fork, vines again cling to the south-facing canyon wall and up onto the gentler terrain atop the ridge, at 2,000 feet, where new grapevines have taken hold. A dozen miles north, just east of downtown Walla Walla, a more familiar winegrowing area is in rapid expansion. The Mill Creek corridor, which Chris Figgins helped put on the map, has grown award-winning wine grapes since the turn of this century. Yet its story has hardly begun. Longtime vintners and optimistic newcomers have staked new claims on the broad hillside above Mill Creek, each pushing farther east into the foothills of the Blues, all propelled by the same interests as those planting along the North Fork. 62 1889 WASHINGTON’S MAGAZINE DECEMBER | JANUARY 2023
Walla Walla is heating up. As wine drinkers across the country embrace the bold, expressive reds grown in this celebrated American Viticultural Area (AVA), outside and local investment follow suit. New reaches for Walla Walla wine country mean fresh terroirs to taste, which attracts tourism, a win-win for the region. But the migration east into the Blue Mountains foothills makes sense for more pressing reasons. Growing season temperatures have already advanced enough to concern winegrowers and winemakers. Many also fear a water-scarce future here. Higher-elevation areas like the North Fork and Mill Creek offer cooler temperatures and more rainfall. For Walla Walla wines, there’s nowhere to go but upward. Rick Small is not surprised to see new vineyards along these foothills. Small founded Woodward Canyon Winery in 1981, one of Walla Walla’s first, when the air was colder and the warmest sites still appealed to grapes. Over
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With Hors Catégorie, Christophe Baron pioneered the rocky slopes of Walla Walla’s North Fork area.
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