Scary news: Duckhorn is planting a vineyard in our precious Red Mountain (WA) AVA

In my humble opinion about this news, I hope Duckhorn doesn't screw this up. Every time I've had Duckhorn's CA wines, I've disliked them, and they are certainly not worth anywhere near their exorbitant prices. I view Duckhorn as a winery which screws over ignorant consumers with low quality and high prices, covered with an unfortunately-opaque marketing gloss. The wine world would be better off without them. So it was with not a little trepidation that I read that Duckhorn is horning in on one of America's best winegrape sites: Red Mountain AVA (near Benton City WA). It would be great if such fantastic land could be saved for winemakers and winery owners who know how to make good wine and are willing to sell it for a fair price.

Holding my breath . . .

Red Mountain's last land grab

This article announces a sale of the last open tracts in the tiny, and justifiably famous, Red Mountain AVA in Washington.

John Williams planted first on Red Mountain in 1975 (that land is Kiona Winery now), and since then the area has seen more and more superbly-high quality grapes grown by many wineries.

Note that Duckhorn (a Napa winery with overpriced, substandard wines in my view*) is one of the bidders; I sure hope they don't win the Red Mountain land, as I fear that would drag down the quality, and push up the wine prices, out there. Fingers crossed, everyone, for a quality purchaser!

*I may be the only person alive who dislikes Duckhorn wines. Spectator gives them (overall) a bunch of scores in the 90s, but also many scores in the low 80s, and in the 70s, and even one score of 68! 68! Would a respectable winery issue a wine like that? All I know is that when I went to a Duckhorn tasting at Zupans once, the wines were shut down and terrible. Maybe that only means they don't know how to train a sales rep to make sure the poured wines are good/ready, but even that is a sign of a substandard winery.