500 Wineries? Yawn.

Yep, sonny, there was a time, less than 25 years ago (don't giggle!), that you could write a whole guidebook to Washington wine and list only 37 wineries. Seattlest should know, we typed every word of the fucking thing. Ah, just look how young we were in 1983:

    • Page 1: "wine touring ... a new concept"
    • Page 5: "Are all these new wineries going to make it?"

As it turned out, of course, very few failed. And when Liquor Board officially licenses Sweet Valley Wines of Walla Walla this week, the number of wineries in Washington will reach 500. In the days since Touring the Wine Country of Washington was published, vineyard acreage and harvest tonnage have quadrupled, and everyone (except the business editors at the Seattle Times, who embarrassed their own wine writer with this report) recognizes that Washington wine is where it's at.

Oh, by the way: Alibris has 28 copies of the book left, Amazon has 22, starting at one penny, plus shipping.