Wine is an expression of the place in which it grows -- the wind, the sun, the soil. Remarkable wines come from remarkable places.
The surreal adventure began on a glorious August day as my Honda wound through the intriguing, ever-changing Columbia River Valley and dumped me, plunk, in a Walla Walla parking lot. From there the real magic took hold.
Susan McBride’s broad grin welcomed me. I’m pretty sure this woman is herself magical. Endless energy and vision propel her willy-nilly everywhere, and she literally pops up all over the globe. Just yesterday, when we planned my next visit to the winery, she apologized for the timing and her schedule.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, Thailand,” she said. “Thursday is Thailand, but it’s just an opportunity I can’t pass up.”
The vibrating energy of Susan’s presence fans my smaller, simpler soul into flame, and for decades now (strange to admit it out loud) we’ve been playing off one another, collaborating on projects and indulging in adventures I never would have dared without her.
Ask me sometime about our two newborns and the Lear jet. Yeah. Magic.
The door of her Mazda slams, and soon the two of us are leaving town on a dreamy country road aptly named Pleasant View. She gives me a history lesson on why the town of Milton-Freewater has such a strange name, and then sets me down inside a project I have seen only in photos and sketches and site plans. It’s a little country schoolhouse destined to become the new tasting room for Force Majeure, the winery Susan and her husband Paul own together.
We pick our way through weeds, and the front door creaks open. Light streams into the dark interior, sending dust-beams floating to the floor. The same floor we’ve been designing from a distance.
It’s a wild, déjà vu feeling of having been here sometime before that throws me for a bit. Is this real? I had imagined the hallway like this, but that archway over the front door--it’s twice the size I expected.
Oh—the giant windows! Stunning. My heart pounds. Wait; is that real slate on the blackboards? My mind begins to race, imagining ways to reuse the vintage, honed slate in the remodel.
We plow through rooms and stacks and open odd little doors in a great scavenger hunt of possibility and imagination. We chatter and “what if” and gesticulate wildly, as though we can conjure our vision into reality with a wave of a hand.
Who knows. Maybe we can.
. . . . . . . .
The massive, modern exterior of the winery itself, where the real magic has already been turning out great wines for 3 years, stands in sharp contrast to the modest, three-room schoolhouse. The pitch of her roof makes a courteous nod to that of the historic building, and her rusted steel accents pay homage to the schoolhouse’s red brick. She towers over the schoolhouse, wrapping her sophisticated façade around the older, smaller structure protectively.
Inside the winery’s massive doors I am in Narnia, gaping at wonders I don’t understand and still can’t explain. It intrigues, enchants.
I offer a novice’s wide-eyed perspective, agape at the wonder of mysteries ancient and modern holding hands.
While I am a connoisseur of beauty, I confess to knowing Flat Nothing about
winemaking. Forcemajeurevineyards.com can give you an intelligent discussion of wine, while I offer simply a novice’s wide-eyed perspective, agape at the wonder of mysteries ancient and modern holding hands in a setting that has captivated me. The resulting alchemy somehow transforms the grapes quietly growing just outside its doors into exceptional, world class wines.
So in the barrel room, my head swivels like Dorothy's when she reaches the land of Oz. A long, narrow window is set like a jewel in the wall in exactly the right place to frame the Blue Mountains beyond. In the absence of a tasting room, guests currently taste wines right here, surrounded by barrels and barrels of aging wine. It’s dreamy.
Behind the massive winery structure, the Stellaire vineyard quietly grows in the hazy shadow of the mountains, sucking enchantment from the famed, loamy soil. Like Force Majeure’s Red Mountain vineyard, grapes from Stellaire are already producing exquisite wines. Under the sorcery of winemaker Todd Alexander, Force Majeure's very first Cabernet Savignon from this vineyard jolted the wine world by scoring a perfect 100 points.
My feet are rooted to the ground as I stare out over Stellaire, the stillness bleeding into my soul. Despite our goal to pack this day full of progress, I linger, slowing to the stunning simplicity of rhythmic rows and hazy hills, and let the breeze sing to me.
Yes. Definitely magic.
. . . . . . . .
The Tornado tucks me back into her car, and as we wind our way through town and into the countryside beyond, Susan spins the tale of their newest venture, a magnificent and unusual new vineyard on the steep hills rimming the North Fork of the Walla Walla River. It’s the brainchild of husband and partner, Paul McBride, who courted this exact space of earth for more than a year before landing it in his portfolio.
I find it poetically appropriate that the McBrides’ initial winemaking venture began in 2004 as Grand Rêve--“the great dream,” for Paul is a dreamer, equal parts visionary and researcher. Before even the Red Mountain vineyards had grown to maturity, he sourced well-researched grapes, pairing them carefully with equally remarkable winemakers in their first Collaboration series. Both the vision and the company grew, becoming a true “force of nature”—Force Majeure. And nature, the “terroir”, has become both the passion of Paul McBride and the defining character of his wine.
Paul has zero interest in being conventional. Rather, he watches, researches, and waits for that special project, a chance to break new ground in winemaking.
So when Paul got wind of a kindred spirit, the equally visionary Professor of Geology at Walla Walla’s Whitman College, Dr. Kevin Pogue, he paid attention.
Pogue had a brainstorm. What if he mapped the Walla Walla area for qualities critical to growing exceptional wine grapes, factors such as ideal elevation, soil content, slope, exposure? What might he find? He and his students consolidated the resulting data and overlaid it on a regional map.
“Picture light from heaven beaming down on one part of the map,” Susan says.
One site Had It All.
Wizard Paul McBride was bitten and smitten.
Wine is an expression of the place in which it grows--the wind, the sun, the soil. Remarkable wines come from remarkable places.
It would not be simple. But Paul has a reputation for being a bit of a pioneer in viticulture--trying new techniques, new areas, matching vine types to soil chemistry. It was Paul who first dared to farm grapes on the slopes of Red Mountain, the McBrides' first vineyard. That vineyard recently produced a 99-point Cabernet Sauvignon and a 99-point Syrah off the same site, something that has never happened before as far as I know.
Paul understood this opportunity and the risk, knew also that the North Fork property would not be an easy site. But he also believed it would be one that would express itself in the wine terroir—the place.
We step out of the car into a warm breeze on a hill so steep it’s dizzying. We can see for miles, and I gaze out over newly-planted vineyards to the hazy Blue Mountains beyond. It’s still. It’s breathtaking. I want to roll out a sleeping bag and sleep here in this soothing, silent space.
Susan waves her hands and orients me to the different “blocks” of the vineyard, sections that each hold unique soil, wind direction, and slope. Each block calls for a different variety, she explains, as she points out Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Syrah, tiny sprigs just now.
It’s stunning. But it’s more than beauty. It’s geology and vision and chemistry and persistence and science and prayer and sweat.
A gleaming, red tractor’s slim dimensions intrigue me, and Susan points out how this diminutive workhorse is able to slide efficiently between narrow rows. Some local wineries actually still use horses to harvest, since more tightly-spaced rows can yield more wine.
Aside from the tractor and the Mazda, it feels like pure nature up here, but cutting-edge technology is quietly at work. A weather station sends data to winemakers who may be miles away, alerting them to moisture, temperature, and wind, so they can remotely tweak the irrigation as needed. What I first assume are windmills for power turn out to actually be giant stir-sticks to keep the air moving when frost threatens. Wizardry is truly afoot behind the bucolic view.
"Look! This is already setting fruit!”
Susan bends to show me miniature grapes the size of pinheads, and we marvel over the growth in just three weeks’ time. But it’s a long journey, perhaps seven years, between a new vineyard and sitting down to sip its wine.
As we stroll the vineyard I learn about phylloxera, the insect that nearly decimated France’s wine industry, and about the hearty American root stock that saved France, metaphorically speaking. The right root stock is just one way of farming organically. Force Majeure is experimenting, too, with biodynamics. What if you just take what the land gives you, and interfere as little as possible? Would the terroir not truly have a chance to shine?
She’s talking now about toast and cooperage and the way you pair blocks with barrels with toast. What…? My head shakes, and Susan adeptly explains that “toast” is the art of charring the inside of the wine barrels. You know how you might like your marshmallows lightly singed, while I want mine more generously caramelized all over? The varying toast on barrels adds nuance to the wine ripening inside. Light char? A little burnt on the edges? No toast? A skilled winemaker pairs a certain block of grapes with just the right toast to create the perfect wine.
My brain is threatening to overflow, and I retreat into the beauty of the moment and just rest there, memorizing the feel of the warm breeze on my skin and the solace of this spot.
I vow to return when the vines are waist high.
. . . . . . . .
I write “crush” on my bucket list, too.
Back at the winery, preparations are already in the works for the crush, the manual, hands-on collaborative business of moving freshly picked grapes from truck to hopper to conveyor belt. As nature is the star in grape-growing, humans are the secret sauce in the crush as they rake, sort, and pick out the raisiny bits. Another hopper shakes off the stems, and then it’s back to the conveyer belt where the humans examine every last grape. It’s communal, social, a celebration of the collaboration of nature and vision—the grand rêve and the force majeure.
I write “crush” on my bucket list, too.
But for now my task is something I am much more familiar with. We wander the grounds once more. We snap Before pictures. We dream. We “what if.” We measure and sketch and doodle and research and wave our hands wildly. And slowly the future of the Pleasant View Schoolhouse in its new life as an old-new tasting studio begins to take shape in our minds.
April 2022. The first weekend of April is the traditional opening bell of wine tasting season, I learn. Can we turn this dusty building around by then?
We’re about to find out.
My heart and head are full of my own dreams as my Honda and I head toward home, but the magic clings to me. Dreamily I breathe in the scent of the Columbia River Valley, and before I have re-entered my real world, the sun has turned the river to gold.
I’m home now, but not the same.
The vineyard has worked its magic on me.
Comments