WALLA WALLA — Getting a positive national review for his French-influenced restaurant in this remote farming town thrilled Mike Davis.
Unfortunately, Gourmet magazine’s praise for 26 brix came the same day in January the chef-owner decided to close because he couldn’t survive the recession without more local clientele.
As the number of wineries near Walla Walla grew to more than 100 in the past decade, wine enthusiasts started calling it the Napa Valley of the Northwest. Now, leaders in this and other rising wine regions from New York to Central California that are far from urban centers wonder if the recession will leave a temporary blemish or start them on a permanent downslide.
“It hurts all of us,” Jacob Crenshaw, chef and co-owner of T. Maccarone’s, a cozy Italian restaurant in Walla Walla, said of his competitors’ closures. “The possibility is there that we won’t be as interesting a tourist destination.”
Washington state is the nation’s No. 2 producer of premium wine behind California. Worth about $3 billion annually, its wine industry has seen steady growth in the past two decades, with an estimated 33,000 acres now under cultivation with wine grapes.
The federal government recognized the Walla Walla region of southeastern Washington for its grape-growing terroir in 1984, and about a decade later the farm town surrounded by sprawling wheat fields began evolving into a tourist magnet.
By 2007, Walla Walla Village Winery sold out of its releases even before the holidays. But this year owner Barb Clark is waiting anxiously for tourists to make the five-hour drive from the coastal cities for spring barrel tasting in early May.
Walla Walla’s toniest businesses need to develop a more local customer base to carry them through the winter because of the mountain passes — snowy in winter — that separate them from much of their existing clientele, Clark and others said.
Similar businesses in California’s Napa Valley benefit from their region being just an hour from the San Francisco area, where about 4 million people live, as well as from the valley’s worldwide renown. The economic downturn has slowed tourism and wine sales slightly there, locals say, but new restaurants, hotels and shops continue to open.
In Paso Robles, a central California wine region more comparable to Walla Walla, at least one restaurant has closed in the past year, and lodging reservations are about 25 percent below normal, said Stacie Jacob, executive director of the Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance.
“We used to be focused on midweek promotions. Weekends were gravy. Nobody worried about them because they were full,” she said. “Now, there’s more of an awareness of the weekends because there’s more availability then.”
But Paso Robles also is further along in the transition from agricultural town to wine tourism destination that Walla Walla is pursuing, said Jacob, who previously worked for the Washington Wine Commission and is familiar with Washington’s wine country. More high-end restaurants in Paso Robles are already 10 years old and are faring better, having developed a local clientele.
“The other thing is that you can go through Paso on your way to somewhere else. We have more traffic compared to Walla Walla,” she said. “For most people, you’re not going through Walla Walla. You’re driving to get there.”
In the Finger Lakes wine region of upstate New York — also off the beaten path but with a much older wine industry and many other reasons to visit — tourism is down only about 2 percent, said Scott Butler, director of marketing for the Finger Lakes Tourism Alliance. And he said a good number of restaurants and attractions in the region already open only seasonally. “Our biggest tourism numbers come from May to September, so a lot of the restaurants just take that into consideration and maybe have a side business,” Butler said.
Davis had high hopes for 26 brix in Walla Walla’s century-old D’acres building, a former hotel with a birdcage elevator and stamped-tin ceilings imported from France in the late 1800s.
The venture didn’t come without hiccups. He shut down briefly in 2006 to rework his menu to better appeal to locals.
But he said the downturn made it too hard to fill the 6,800-square-foot space during this winter.
He wasn’t alone. 26 brix was one of five restaurants to close in Walla Walla in January.
“The recession just squeezed us so much we couldn’t do it, and we had a huge space for that type of restaurant,” he said. “It’s probably going to take us two years to recover. Financially and emotionally, it devastated us.”
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