April Note: Raise your glass — or maybe your pliers — to wine | Magazine Leave a comment

I have to be honest here: I’m no wine connoisseur.

I like wine well enough. I’m just not studious enough to really understand it. I don’t know tannins from terroir. (In fact, I can only throw around highfalutin words like that because of Google.)

So unless I’m buying it at a gas station, whatever wine I pick up is probably fine. My palate’s too uncouth to know the difference.

For me, the greatest wine challenge is simply to get the bottle open. Working with awkward tools like corkscrews helps me work up a thirst, but it certainly doesn’t do much to set the mood for an enchanting meal.

I start the corkscrew sideways and get everything out of kilter, or I jam it in too hard and end up splitting the cork into pieces that fall into the wine. Or the corkscrew’s so badly positioned that the bottle slips clear off the counter or into the sink or something.

It’s enough to drive a guy to drink — assuming you could get to the stuff, that is.

Sure, I could stick to labels that come in screw-cap bottles. But when I’m buying something that’s sealed in foil, how do I know what I’m getting?

I’ve learned the hard way that it’s best to get all that foil off the bottle before you even think about trying to open it. One time I spent 15 minutes trying in vain to stick a corkscrew into a bottle that turned out to have a screw cap.

Wasn’t my proudest moment.

At any rate, whether you can open a bottle of wine without resorting to a pair of pliers and a crescent wrench or not, we hope you’ll enjoy our annual wine issue. We’re again celebrating the pleasures that come from the hard work and craftsmanship of what is arguably the Yakima Valley’s tastiest product.

Try a sample of April’s articles:

• Our region’s wines have gained worldwide renown in recent decades, but the wine business started here long before any of us set foot in this Valley. Our newest writer — local author and historian Ellen Allmendinger — tracks the industry’s colorful past in her first article for us.

• You like wine. You like food. But which wines go best with which foods? Christine Corbett Conklin asked some local experts for guidance and got some helpful thoughts.

• And if you want to talk vintage aesthetics, a Selah family’s century-old farmhouse is a scene to savor. Melissa Labberton and Chad Bremerman took a recent tour of the place and came back with an intriguing backstory.

So pour yourself a glass of wine — or perhaps an easier-to-access beverage — settle back and savor this month’s magazine.

And I hope you’ll notice that getting the cover open wasn’t quite as much hassle as breaking into a bottle of wine.

— John Taylor