Washington’s official state vegetable grows in a valley with more than 120 wineries, four-plus hours from Seattle
Washington’s state vegetable isn’t a potato, even though potatoes are the state’s biggest cash crop by a wide margin. It’s the Walla Walla sweet onion, made official by the legislature in 2007 after a class of Eatonville seventh graders spent three years lobbying for it — who knew a vegetable needed its own legislative campaign? The valley that grows it also happens to hold one of Washington’s most serious wine scenes.
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Walla Walla Valley became an official wine appellation in 1984, decades after Gary and Nancy Figgins opened Leonetti Cellar in 1977 as the valley’s first commercial winery. What started as one operation has grown into more than 120 wineries spread across rolling wheat country in Washington’s southeastern corner. Leonetti still makes wine today, and it’s still tough to get on the mailing list.
About 30 tasting rooms cluster within walking distance of each other downtown, lined up along Main Street, Rose Street, and 2nd Avenue. Park once, and you can spend a whole afternoon moving between them on foot — no shuttle, no designated-driver math until you’re headed back to the hotel.
Getting there takes some commitment: Walla Walla sits about 270 miles from Seattle, roughly four and a half hours through Central Washington farmland. Go now if you can — the valley’s grape harvest, known locally as crush, typically ramps up in September, so late summer gets you warm patio weather downtown without the harvest-season crowds.
The name comes from a Sahaptin word usually translated as “many waters,” a nod to the streams that cut through the valley toward the Columbia River. Locals still repeat the line that Walla Walla is “the town so nice they named it twice,” a bit popularized by entertainer Al Jolson in the early 1900s. Whether he actually said it first is beside the point — it stuck.
Skip the wine regions closer to Seattle if you want the real deal — this one is worth the extra hours behind the wheel. And if you’re driving all that way, grab a bag of the onions before you leave; they’re sweet enough to eat like an apple, and they don’t travel nearly as well as the wine does.
Trip tips: grab a rental car to make the drive out here, and lock in your hotel before the good rooms downtown are gone.
