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Spring 2024

Wine

Fall 2003

Walter Clore: a wine visionary

The prose is deliberate, straightforward, and academically understated: “If hardier varieties free of diseases are used and the best cultural practices known to obtain full vine maturity are followed, it is feasible to grow European grapes in favorable sites in south central Washington.”

Those words from Bulletin 823 by Chas Nagel, George Carter, and Walt Clore, exciting as they were in 1976, still could only suggest the potential of Washington’s barely nascent wine industry. By convincing Washington farmers that they could grow vinifera grapes, the source of fine wine, Clore, who died this past January at 91, empowered Washington to join the ranks of the … » More …

Fall 2003

Tasting Washington

The setting is elegant, the food divine, the wine fine and endless and magnificently diverse. On a Sunday evening in June, the Grand Pennington Ballroom at Spokane’s Davenport Hotel is filled with representatives of more than 60 Washington wineries and 20 area restaurants, caterers, and markets-and hundreds of Washington wine devotees.

Taste Washington has paired samplings of Washington food and wine, much to the gathering’s enjoyment. In the process, the celebrants are supporting Washington State University’s fledgling Viticulture and Enology Program and the School of Hospitality Business Management, as well as the Davenport District Arts Board.

A celebratory note also resonates among the participants who … » More …

Spring 2007

Viticultural art

Wine-By-Cougars, the precocious young wine club sponsored by the Washington State University Alumni Association, is adding art to its viticultural appeal. The wine club will offer a special “Artist Expression 2007,” a union of student art and alumni winemaking.

The wine club approached the digital design class taught in Fine Arts and asked students to design a wine label for a special spring release from Woodward Canyon, owned and operated by Rick Small ’69. Design students were instructed to reflect viticulture and the land-grant ideal on their labels. The label chosen is by Annette Ticknor ’07, a communication major and fine art student. (Full disclosure: … » More …

Winter 2002

Columbia Valley wineries double

 

Arthur Linton, center, assistant dean and director of Washington State University’s Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center (IAREC) in Prosser, and Julie Tarara, a USDA research horticulturist, explain the effects of temperature on grape yields to Washington secretary of state Sam Reed during his visit in July. The IAREC is home to WSU’s Viticulture and Enology Program. During the past decade, the number of Columbia Valley wineries has doubled, making Washington the second largest wine-growing region in the nation behind California. Reed, who holds two WSU degrees (’63 Social Studies, ’68 M.A. Political Science), traveled to China on a trade mission in September 2001 … » More …

Winter 2005

What I've Learned Since College: an interview with Theodore Baseler

Ted Baseler is president and CEO of Ste. Michelle Wine Estates. The interview with Hannelore Sudermann took place in his second-floor office at the Chateau Ste. Michelle in Woodinville in late July. Journeying from advertising and marketing into the world of wine hasn’t been the easiest trip, but certainly one worth making, he says, as he now steers Washington’s largest wine company ahead. Baseler graduated from WSU in 1976 with a degree in communications. His wife, JoAnne, is also a Cougar (’75 Ed.), as is his daughter Andrea, who started at WSU this fall.

Look for what you want.

I took a job in advertising … » More …

Winter 2008

L’Américain en Provence

A story about an expatriate—and about his wine. Provence is a world away from Bellevue, where Denis Gayte '97 grew up. And French winemaking is another world away from the public relations career he abandoned. So there he was, with his French heritage and a newly minted "young French winemaker" degree—but still referred to (and always affectionately) as l'Américain. » More ...