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"  In the dusty southeast corner of Washington State, next to sun-bleached wheat fields and a baking runway, lies the most unexpected patch of wine country in America. Behind the Walla Walla airport, in the beige-painted shoebox buildings of a World War II Army air base, a dozen vintners are crushing some of the finest grapes in the country and bottling lush Columbia Valley wines in refreshingly humble surroundings. You fill your trunk with cabernet, syrah, or Sangiovese and walk off your wine buzz in a junkyard of broken-down combines -- all while feeling more akin to the Cooler King than another Sunday driver crunching up the pea gravel at a Napa Valley theme park. The grapes come from just over the horizon -- the eleven million wondrously varied acres of the upper Columbia River Valley, where vineyards planted by speculating apple farmers in the seventies and eighties are now reaching peak maturity, making it the most promising viticultural area in the U.S. We Recommend:  Tamarack Cellars, in the aluminum rectangle that used to be the air-base fire station, whose cabernet franc includes grapes from the volcanic-ash slopes of the Yakima Valley and is supremely rich and floral.  The syrah produced by Caleb Foster at buty (pronounced beauty), made with what might just be the best syrah grapes in the country -- grown in arid soil over a patch of baking cobblestones.   Russell Creek, run by Larry Krivoshein, a retired funeral-home director. His Sangiovese is the closest thing in America to a Tuscan wine -- the fleshy, tannic fruit roasted black in the desert heat.   This story is part of our second annual register of emerging ideas, trends, discoveries, products, people, and obscene gestures you should know about before everyone else does. &amp;amp;lt;&amp;amp;lt; Read Previous * [Back to Esquire 100] * Read Next &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a3479/wallawalla1007/>