California's New Worry: Washington State Wines

Add this to fiscal bankruptcy, urban wildfires, the delta smelt and other threats to life as Californians knew it: the wines of Washington.

Vintners up the Pacific Coast long have been a placid No. 2 in American wine production to California, which turns out some 90% of U.S. wine. California has nearly 3,000 wineries and more than a half-million acres of wine grapes, with overall value to the state of nearly $59 billion, according to the California Wine Institute.

And California wines’ collective brand long ago became synonymous with a certain variety and even quality that now hold their own even with French wines.

Washington has remained a distant second in the U.S. wine business, with only 33,000 acres planted, 600-plus wineries and a value of $3 billion. But now, massive expansion of several Washington wineries up and down the coast suggests that some of the state’s major vintners believe they can finally make a run at California's dominance.

Precept Brands of Walla Walla, for example, recently expanded to a 53,000-square-foot facility, and up the road in Richland, Goose Ridge Vineyards just completed construction of its own big new facility.

Of course, it’s one thing to make more vino and another thing to sell it -- and yet another thing for that increased output and sales to converge into something that rivals a state brand, as California winemakers found out.

But Robin Pollard, executive director of the Washington Wine Commission, is unbowed. “It will translate to having more wine to fill orders, which means we’ll be able to garner more of that space in retail shops or on wine lists in restaurants,” she told the Associated Press.

Maybe. But unfortunately, as it turns out, Washington’s waxing wine efforts aren’t going to get help anytime soon from a friendly quarter that really could have helped the state’s branding push: Amazon.com.

The Seattle-based online retailing giant has abandoned its more than year-long crusade to sell wine online. Amazon worked extensively with both Washington and California vintners on the process and was to have launched wine sales two years ago.

But bogeymen that regulate alcohol sales, and the challenges of shipping such a fragile product, have scotched Amazon’s efforts for now.