Many “best of” wine lists are published each year, but this annual look at my top 100 Washington wines is focused exclusively on wines from this state. I look through a year’s worth of tasting notes and select one wine from each of 100 wineries for inclusion. This ranking is not done strictly by the numbers, though I scored all these wines 90 points or higher on the 100-point scale. But because I firmly believe that both quality and cost are factors in overall excellence, these rankings also took price into account. So with wines that got a 94 score, for instance, I gave a higher ranking on this list to the one that was cheaper. All have been released within the past year, but some are already sold out. Your wine seller can guide you to what is still available, and in some instances he or she may have a newer vintage in stock. Why just one wine per winery? With more than 650 wineries in the state, it is the best way to feature the breadth and depth of the industry’s offerings. My sincere appreciation to the talented growers and winemakers mentioned here, and to all of you who ...

The WSET program is coming to town and going back to school doesn't get much better than this, when it means sitting in the class room with glasses of wine to sample. The Wine & Spirits Educational Trust is the world's prestigious and most recognized leader in wines and spirits education and this will be the first time for this London-based program to reach Eastern Washington. The WSET courses are ideal for anyone in the wine industry, whether working in food service, wine retail and tasting rooms, or in the fields of journalism, marketing, and education. And you don't have to be a professional to take these courses. They are perfect for the wine consumer who has a little or a lot of knowledge about wine. WSET courses for Eastern Washington will be held at the Marcus Whitman Hotel and Conference Center in Walla Walla. Wine writer, Paul Gregutt will be teaching the comprehensive one-day Foundation Course (Level 1) Saturday, September 12 and a three-day Intermediate Course (Level 2), the weekends of October 10 and 18th. A WSET Advanced Course (Level 3) is also available, but will be scheduled for a later time. WSET Instructor Paul Gregutt is recognized as the leading wine writer ...

L’Ecole No 41 is the renovated schoolhouse-turned-winery that greets visitors to Walla Walla as they drive in on Highway 12 from the west. Marty and Megan Clubb took over the winery from her parents, who began it as a retirement project in the early 1980s. It was the third winery to open in Walla Walla, and remains one of the most important — for its history, its vineyards, its forward-thinking owners and, most of all, its wines. I am often asked to name Washington’s signature grape, or to predict the next great varietal to emerge from this state. But sometimes it is more instructive to think about the most notable underperformers. L’Ecole has succeeded with arguably the two most neglected and under-appreciated wine grapes in the country: chenin blanc and sèmillon. Mind you, these are not obscure, nor are they marginal. Chenin makes some of the greatest white wines of the Loire Valley, in styles that run the gamut from dry to ultra-sweet. Sèmillon is the backbone of Bordeaux blanc and also exceptionally popular in Australia, whether barrel-fermented or done in stainless tanks and blended with sauvignon blanc (often labeled simply SBS). L’Ecole’s 2008 “Walla Voila” Chenin Blanc ($15, this week’s pick) ...

Some of the best zinfandels I have tasted recently came — rather surprisingly — not from California but from Washington. The grape used to be a rarity in Washington, but no longer. Thurston Wolfe has made single-vineyard zins since the mid-1990s, and Forgeron began producing them in 2001 (a recent tasting of Forgeron's first six vintages showed them all to be in excellent drinking condition). Rob Griffin's new Columbia Gorge project includes a zinfandel vineyard, and Barnard-Griffin already makes some limited bottlings from nearby grapes. Also in the gorge, Maryhill makes both a regular and a reserve zinfandel; for me, the regular is not only the better one but the winery's best red overall. New entrants to the field include Chelan's Hard Row to Hoe winery; its 2006 zin ($35), sourced from Wahluke Slope grapes, is syrupy and dense, with super-ripe blackberry fruit, mocha and butterscotch. What sets it apart from similar California efforts is that it retains natural acids and some lovely herbal highlights, so it's not just a hot, heavy, alcoholic date — the sort that leaves you exhausted but somehow unsatisfied. Walla Walla's Trio Vintners made a splash with its delicious (but oh-so-high-octane) 2006 zin. Its 2007 Pheasant vineyard ...

If there is a harder working person in the wine business than David O'Reilly, I have yet to meet him or her. O'Reilly moved to Oregon about 20 years ago, did marketing for Elk Cove, where he met Peter Rosback, co-founded Sinean and Owen Roe in the mid-1990s, and has successively launched a series of well-thought-out brands under the Owen Roe umbrella ever since. They are divided among several tiers: the O'Reilly label, which features an Irish wolfhound, is for value-priced Oregon wines; the Abbott's Table is a nine-grape blend; Sharecropper's offers moderately priced Washington cabernet and Oregon pinot. The Owen Roe wines are vineyard-focused, limited-production vineyard designates, packaged in weighty bottles with iconic photographs of Irish monuments. O'Reilly makes at least as many Washington-grown wines as Oregon-grown and has become especially fond of Yakima Valley grapes, notably DuBrul. So fond, in fact, that he purchased the Outlook vineyard — 105 acres just west of DuBrul — and is leasing the old Apex winery in nearby Sunnyside, where he now makes his Washington wines. That facility was once a dairy, and when I met with O'Reilly shortly after his purchase, he was planning to make Sunnyside Cream Winery wines, bottled in recyclable, quart-size ...

Two extraordinary tastings this spring have shone the spotlight on what is arguably Washington's best red grape, merlot. Yes, merlot, that much-abused also-ran, was the star of the show at vertical retrospectives hosted by Walla Walla Vintners and Canoe Ridge Vineyard. For Myles Anderson and Gordy Veneri, the survey of all 13 Walla Walla Vintners merlots -- from 1995 to 2007 -- was an opportunity to see how the wines were aging. Though they were the eighth winery to open in Walla Walla, their newly planted estate vineyard will not be in production until 2010. Up until now their merlots have been assembled from a well-chosen list of growers from around the state. Canoe Ridge Vineyard debuted in 1992 and quickly developed an excellent reputation for its merlots, made with fruit grown at the estate vineyard in the Horse Heaven Hills. For the first decade the winemaker was John Abbott (now at Abeja); most recently Christophe Paubert has been the man in charge. Paubert is French-born and educated; his resume includes work as cellarmaster at the famed Chateau d'Yquem, and winemaking at Chateau Gruaud-Larose in Bordeaux and Montana in New Zealand. His first vintage at Canoe Ridge was 2006, and this was his ...

Hogue Cellars 2006 Cabernet-Merlot; $7 This iconic Yakima Valley winery continues to improve. This excellent, roughly half-and-half blend of cabernet and merlot is in its value tier. Alcohol is under 14 percent, aromas are rich with blackberries, black currants and black olives; and you'll pick up a touch of licorice and herb in the mouth. (Young's-Columbia distributes)Arbor Crest makes a solid comeback. Only a small number of Washington wineries have passed the quarter-century mark  -- not a long history by Old World standards, but highly significant in this competitive industry. For those too young to remember, there were barely three dozen wineries in the state in 1982, the year Arbor Crest was founded, and many of them have disappeared. In the Spokane area, only Latah Creek dates back almost as far. Arbor Crest was founded by the Mielke brothers, David and Harold. The family business was orchards and fruit. David had begun growing grapes in the Wahluke Slope; Harold was working as a medical researcher in the Bay Area. They hired Scott Harris (from California's Davis Bynum winery) to be their winemaker and focused production on white wines, highlighted by a fruity, French-oak-aged, slightly sweet sauvignon blanc. Within a few years Arbor Crest ...

Milbrandt Vineyards 2006 Traditions Merlot; $15 JUST A FEW WEEKS ago, I came across a startling offer. A young Burgundy was being advertised for the jaw-dropping price of $8,500. Granted, this was the Romanée Conti from the Domaine Romanée Conti — by general acclaim the greatest Burgundy in the world. To acquire a single bottle, you often must purchase a mixed case of DRC wines (recent case price online was $55,288); the limited opportunities to do so are doled out to gravy-train riders around the globe. In this instance the vintage happened to be 2005, which the punditerati have declared the vintage of the century (out of six so far). Still, the price seemed incredible. So I trotted down to a local retailer to confirm what I had read. Could any standard 750 ml-size bottle of young wine possibly be sold at such a price in these distressed times? Oh, yes, my retailer friend assured me. In fact, he said, he’d sold the same wine a few months ago for considerably more than $8,500. And even that was considered a bargain, because the wine had gone at auction for more than $15,000 a bottle — plus buyer’s commission, of course. I report ...

Kirkland Signature 2006 Merlot; $9 This is the Costco house brand, and the new merlot comes through with exceptional flavors for the price. It's lush and loaded with black cherry and mocha flavors. Tannins are ripe and smooth, the concentration is surprising, and there are no holes in this wine; it plays out smoothly with a very satisfying richness.Chile's Veramonte aims to bump it up a notch. In another month or so they'll be starting the 2009 harvest in Chile, and if things continue as they have in recent years, the joy juice will be flowing. The past five or six vintages have been at least very good, with 2005 and 2007 just about perfect, and one industry analyst has said the country is the best-located in the world to combat climate change, given its natural geography, sustainable water supply and seemingly endless coast. The only significant challenge facing Chilean winemakers is one that affects virtually every newcomer to the global wine scene: how to bump up its image as a producer of everyday, cheerful value wines to a serious competitor in the market for pricier, super premium wines. One company working both ends with considerable success is Veramonte. It was the surprise winner ...