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Paul Gregutt

Paul Gregutt has been covering the wines and wineries of the Pacific Northwest since the mid-1980s. From 2002 to 2012 he wrote a weekly wine column for the Seattle Times and authored two critically-acclaimed editions of ‘Washington Wines & Wineries – The Essential Guide’ (UC Berkeley Press). He served as the Northwest editor for Wine Enthusiast magazine from 1998 until 2022. Early on he was an original staff member of both the Seattle Weekly and KZAM-FM. He lives with his wife Karen and his rescue dog Cookie in Waitsburg (pop. 1204), a farm community about 20 miles NE of Walla Walla. When not tasting and writing about wine he writes songs, plays guitar and sings in his band the DavePaul5 (davepaul5.com) Follow his writing at PaulG on Wine, paulgregutt.substack.com, and in the Waitsburg Times.
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Going Rogue in the Applegate AVA

Though most of the valley’s wineries are quite small and the wines sold principally out of tasting rooms and local retailers, a few have reached beyond and deserve much wider recognition.
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Accolades for NW Wines and a Restaurant

Wine Enthusiast mag’s annual list of the year’s Top 100 Best Buys has just been published. Understandably this is one of the year’s most widely-read issues.
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Oregon’s First Winery

The Oregon Wine Board reports that European immigrants began planting grapes here as far back as the 1840s. In 1852 (some sources say 1854) settler Peter Britt planted a vineyard at his home in Jacksonville that included a wide variety of Vitis Vinifera grapes, among them some ‘Franc Pinot’ that may have been Oregon’s first planting of Pinot Noir.
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Keeping Score: The Narrowing of Wine Ratings

The once-rare scores of 95 and above have become commonplace. Someone somewhere no matter how obscure has given that $8 Chardonnay a 95 and the number is all that matters.
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Chill Out: What’s the Best Temperature to Serve White Wine?

Consider what happens to a wine when it is chilled down to refrigerator or ice bucket temperature. The aromatics – a strong point for many white wines – all but vanish. The fruit flavors close up – shrinkage! The acids pop out aggressively, because everything else has been squashed. And should that wine have a flaw, such as brett or TCA, it will either be undetectable or hidden to such a degree as to seem unimportant.
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Does Washington State Wine Have an Identity Problem?

There is still no signature grape providing a clear distinction (definition?) for Washington wines; a handle that consumers and trade who are not located in the Pacific Northwest want and need.
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When Wine Becomes Collectible: Who Wins?

At least we can go into any number of museums around the globe and feast on Picassos, as I have often done. But turning rare wines into speculative investments means that for the vast majority of wine drinkers they will never be experienced.
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WAugust Wine Promotion hits some Bumps

Yes there are all kinds of discounts sparking quick sales, but discounted wines can do as much damage as good to a winery’s long-term sales and a region’s overall reputation for quality.
Wine

What Makes Patricia Green Cellars Different from Every Other American Winery

The biggest challenge for any winery producing a big lineup of Pinots from the same vintage is making each of them distinctive, stand-alone wines. When it gets down to single clone or block selections, all too often I taste a good component rather than a complete wine. The remarkable achievement at Patty Green Cellars is that the dozens of different cuvées are all distinctive and compelling, no matter the vintage.
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Wine Vintage Charts: Unreliable and Harmful

Granted that one would expect wines that have come directly from winery libraries to be in fine condition, as all of these were. But shouldn’t there have been some noticeable differences between the two vintages – one that most agree was more difficult than “very good” and one that is considered to be among the very best of the past two decades?
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Seattle, Washington

Contact: Editor@postalley.org