Snipes Mountain vineyards
— — a low ridge that holds the heat after the valley cools.
Not only on a wall.
“A small AVA on a long, low rise above the Yakima River. The cobblestones underfoot were rolled here by the Missoula floods. William Bridgman planted Muscat on this slope in 1917, and some of those vines are still in the row. Late afternoon, the ridge stays warm a little longer than the valley does, and the rows go gold before the light leaves. from the studio
Snipes Mountain vineyards, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Snipes Mountain is one of the smallest American Viticultural Areas in Washington State, recognised by the federal government in 2009. The ridge sits inside the larger Yakima Valley AVA, lifting a few hundred feet above the river plain near the town of Sunnyside. The growing area covers roughly 4,145 acres, with planted vineyards on a fraction of that. The slope is named for Ben Snipes, the nineteenth-century Washington cattleman who ranged stock through the valley.
The defining soil here is cobblestone, deposited by the Missoula floods at the end of the last ice age and exposed where the ridge crests. The stones store daytime heat and release it slowly into the canopy after sundown, lengthening the ripening window. Upthrust Columbia River basalt sits below. William B. Bridgman planted Muscat of Alexandria and Mourvèdre on the slope in 1917, and a small block of those original Muscat vines is still in production, among the oldest commercial vinifera in the Pacific Northwest.
Harvest on the ridge usually begins in the first half of September with the early whites and runs into October for the late reds. The Yakima Valley sits in the rain shadow of the Cascades and receives roughly eight inches of precipitation a year, so the vines are irrigated from the Yakima River. Bud break comes in April; veraison, when the reds turn colour, falls in early August. Winter cold snaps are the real risk, and growers watch the forecast from December through February.