A Second Life for Walla Walla Wines

For hundreds of years, brandy has been prescribed medicinally, added to baked goods, and, of course, sipped neat or made into cocktails. Ten years ago, Keith Dahlgren and Craig Wollam brought that history home to Walla Walla when they opened their craft brandy distillery, DW Distilling, in an old barracks built during World War II to train bomber crews.

Dahlgren says he often thinks about how, after a long day, the young men from the bomber crews would drink a glass of something - likely brandy - in the same space they are distilling today.

“People have enjoyed this drink for centuries,” he says.

Brandy, whose name comes from the Dutch word “brandewijn” (“burnt wine”), has been commercially distilled from wine since the 16th century, originally as a way to preserve wine for long journeys. While some distilleries use low-quality wines in their distilling, DW distills only delicious local wines into their spirits.

“Some of the best wines in the world are here in Walla Walla,” says Dahlgren. “There’s so many wineries, and they’re all so good, and we’ve got some great relationships with the winemakers here. One of the things we really try to do is make the brandy taste like the wine that it comes from, so each of our brandies is a little different and has its own flavor.”

Winemaker Brad Binko owns Eternal Wines in Walla Walla, one of the local businesses that provides wine to be distilled into DW brandy.

“You know, I never had my wines made into brandy before,” Binko says. “It was kind of fun to see the final product — if we gave them a Viognier or we gave them a Merlot, there was a different personality to each of these brandies.”

Binko says he chose Walla Walla for his winery because it’s an up-and-coming wine region and because the soil is so great for growing grapes, in part because of the minerals that were deposited by the Missoula floods thousands of years ago.

“As a winemaker,” he says, “I think it’s important for the grapes to show their true nature at the end of fermentation.”

In the DW distillery, co-owner Wollam points to a row of brandy aging in barrels - distilled from a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Merlot from Eternal Wines, as well as a Rosé from The Walls. He pours a small glass from one barrel.

“This is much much stronger than most alcohols you’ll get - this is at about 56%,” he says, taking a sniff. “I get the right vanillas there. I get a little bit of baking spice. I’m getting a little bit of cherry in it, almost like a chocolate-covered cherry.”

To taste a brandy, he says, you first want to take a little “nose” and see what smells you get from it — peaches and citrus, perhaps, if it’s a Riesling brandy. Then take a small taste, but don’t finish it. See what other flavors you get on your tongue. And finally, add a drop of water and taste again — you’ll get new flavors you hadn’t caught before.

“What’s really happening here is the universal solvent, water, is breaking off of the weak hydrogen bonds,” says Wollam. “By breaking them apart, you can taste more things. But it evolves, and if you’re going to make a cocktail, you’re going to put a rock in it, you want to know how well it’ll evolve.”

From the history of brandy to the flavors themselves, it’s all evolving.