We have gone east to Montana, where the glacial Lake Missoula had formed, creating a lake that contained 500 square miles of water. The sheer size of this lake was staggering. So was the flood created by the breaking of the dam.

In one day, 500 square miles of water created, scoured, scraped the path of least resistance, destroying everything in its path, forever altering the landscape of Eastern Washington, northern Oregon, part of Idaho on its way to the Pacific Ocean at a speed of about 80 miles per hour.

It carried huge boulders, soil, gravel, also giant icebergs, creating a lunar landscape in the process. It created huge lakes, hills, mounds of gravel, sand and loess. This catastrophic situation happened about a hundred times because Lake Missoula in Montana would re-ice, creating new dams, breaking again and again creating new floods that finally shaped our landscape.
For our information, what today is Yakima Valley to Walla Walla and Tri-Cities, was a huge lake called Lake Lewis about 800 feet deep. If you have watched a young river off a mountain, you will see violence and power unimaginable, very much like a tsunami destroying everything in its path.

I can remember growing up in northern Italy, in the Dolomites Mountains. After a long deluge - 10 days of rain, the two rivers passing through my village carried boulders the size of houses,totally reshaping the landscape each time. The river always took the path of least resistance, taking away land from one owner and giving it to another.

In Eastern Washington, the landscape was formed and re-formed until it remained what it is today. So all the water that remains from these floods are the Columbia River, Yakima River and part of the Snake River from Idaho that still flows to the Pacific Ocean. When you look at the landscape, try to imagine how it looked 15 to 20 thousand years ago. All the soils were deposited by the floods, winds, and the volcanoes. That soil is the terroir of Eastern Washington. 

Angelo Tavernaro
Master Sommelier

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