Exceptional wines under $150? Who is he kidding?

"Great Wine Bargains" in Slate

Mike Steinberger drives me crazy. Slate’s wine critic almost always looks eastward for his “bargain” picks—and by eastward, I mean Europe. In his previous column, which showed off great wines going for a tenth of the price of today’s picks, he didn’t pick a single Washington wine. Oregon was as close as he got.

In today’s column, there is (I kid you not) only one American wine. And it’s from California. That kind of thinking is so 15 years ago, Mike. Napa has sold out, people. California wine is The Man’s wine now. You’ve got to come to the Northwest to have an authentic, down-home, small-grower experience these days.

I’m not some kind of tree-hugging antiglobalization wacko, but I do find it hard to believe that only one American wine was good enough to make the list. If there’s one thing that writing this blog has taught me, it’s that there are really fantastic local wines in Walla Walla—and 98 percent of them fall into the (huge!) category of costing between $15 and $150 retail.

For example, I had a glass of Walla Voila chenin blanc with dinner on Friday. It was, in a word, transcendent. I don’t dare tell you what the bottle costs or where to get it, though, lest Marty should run out of it and ruin my summer.

So keep tasting locally, friends. We can prove Mr. Steinberger’s eurocentric picks to be myopic—one bottle at a time.