Last month's column on the recent success of wines made from grapes grown in eastern Washington state's high desert generated a large amount of reader feedback. Most questions ran along the lines of, "If the Washington desert is such a great place for viticulture, then why weren't they growing grapes there before?" Many readers also asked for recommendations and sources for Washington wines in Japan. A few even pleaded for the identity of the winery that recently received two perfect 100-point scores from Robert Parker.
Fear not -- the answers to all your questions can be found here.
To recap, recurring floods at the end of the last Ice Age covered eastern Washington state with layers of the silty soil that grapevines love. Prior to the introduction of irrigation, however, viticulture was all but impossible (the desert receives just 20 cm of rain per year, versus nearly a meter on the Pacific side of the Cascade mountain range).
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