Seven Hills Winery

Perhaps you thought only Rome is known for its “Seven Hills.” Not so fast, Eternal City. Walla Walla also has its Seven Hills, in the form of a winery.

The Seven Hills Winery is located in the superbly restored Whitehouse-Crawford building in downtown Walla Walla. The award-winning restoration of this former lumber mill preserved the 100-year-old brick building, including its posts, its beams, and most importantly, its charm. You can find it listed in the National Historic Register. It turns out that this historic building is an excellent venue for making fine wine and tasting the finished product. You can view the sky-lit temperature- and humidity-controlled barrel room from the tasting room itself, thanks to a strategically placed picture window. The barrels themselves are the traditional Bordeaux-style 225-liter oak barrels that are prevalent throughout the industry. The barrels are also the source of the Seven Hills wine club’s name, the Barrique Society. Nice touch. WineTrail note: Seven Hills Winery’s Guild Society is a second-level wine club, giving members more wine per shipment than first-level wine clubs, more discounts and complimentary shipping.

Seven Hills Winery focuses on reds and enjoys a reputation for great balance, which it states is a “trinity of fruit, acidity, and tannin.” This trinity of ingredients inspired the use of seven Irish trinity cross-knot symbols as part of the winery’s logo—at least we at WineTrails Northwest choose to think so. Enjoy the wine right out of the bottle now or order it with your meal at the gourmet Whitehouse-Crawford Restaurant, also housed in the building. Alternatively, you can cellar this wine for years. Working closely with the grape growers of Red Mountain, Columbia Valley, and Walla Walla (especially the distinguished Seven Hills Vineyard), winemaker Casey McClellan makes single-vineyard wines and blends selectively to achieve, you guessed it, “harmony among fruit, acidity, and tannin.” He also uses fruit from Oregon to make charmingly crisp riesling and pinot gris.

I was just pondering … it’s a good thing the winery doesn’t use the 300-liter barrels often used in Australia to age its wines. Otherwise, the name of the wine club would have to be the “Hogshead Society.”

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  Order the book!

  Seven Hills Winery was featured in WineTrails of Walla Walla as part of the Walla Walla Downtown WineTrail on page 432!

• 

  Order the book!

  Seven Hills Winery was featured in WineTrails of Washington as part of the Walla Walla Downtown WineTrail on page 432!