Klickitat Canyon Winery Tasting Room and Farm Store - Lyle, Washington

Guillaume T.

What a really simple place.
We stopped there almost by accident and asked for a tasting. The owner/winemaker was absent, but the person present (who didn't know anything about the wine) told us we could taste whatever bottle was open.
So... it's REALLY different from what you usually drink, because it's purely natural and as a consequence they don't use any sulfite, but then the wine ages WAY faster.
My wife and me are French and love old wines, so we liked it and bought bottles, but these wines 1/ won't suit everybody (if not most) and 2/ have to be drunk really quickly and be stored properly else you'll end up with vinegar.

Masta S.

So I bought a bottle of their blueberry wine from the ester short park Vancouver farmers market, and it turned out to be completely mothered and turned into vinegar, so I contacted the company and they replaced the bottle of wine, so I got the monarch rose the following Saturday and opened it 3 days later and it was amazing......... 4 days later the wine was total vinegar...... It was kept refrigerated and horizontal the entire time... Contacted the company about this and got a very rude response!!!!! If you like short lived wine and can drink it all in one sitting this is your go to company, if you enjoy savoring your wine do not buy from this company.

Shanti K.

Was so excited to try their fruit wine that I spent almost $100 on three bottles at the Vancouver farmers market. When we opened the first one it was obviously off. Smelled and tasted like very strong vinegar. We thought oh well, let's just open another bottle but that one was spoiled too! It turns out that all three bottles were spoiled and undrinkable. We dumped out the bottles to recycle the glass and contacted the company the following morning. The company made it sound like we were trying to get free wine from them which is so insulting. I told them they should open a bottle themselves to check it so that one, they know I am not lying about this, and two so they stop selling spoiled wine to people! After reading online reviews, they have done this to other people in the past. So incredibly disappointing to be treated like this from a business.

Clif B.

The wine is really great. Plenty of organic wine and conventional. We loved to drive to and from Vancouver. the 84 side & the 14 side.
the people were really kind as well. nothing over blown, nothing to "Domain Serene" just really good wine & people.

what else do you need?

if your in Hood River your should make the drive across the $2 bridge for sure.

R R.

Lovely natural wines in a beautiful Gorge setting. The rabbits around the winery were so fun to watch.

paul G.

I'm confused by this wine. I have purchased two bottles of Ruby Red. The first bottle tasted so odd I thought it was corked and poured it down the drain. Because I want organic, local, and sulfite free (hard to find), I decided to try again. Now I'm wondering if a wine made this way is just going to taste radically different and if I should get used to it? It smells like the elderberry syrup we use for treating a cold and tastes super intense and kind of medicinal. I can't quite put my finger on it. It's expensive so I am going to drink it anyway, but is it supposed to taste like this? (update: I changed my review to 3 stars and I am trying to be open minded about this interesting winery. I am starting to think that the flavor is just so radically different that you have to give it time and keep an open mind. Different is good. There's a lot of wine out there with no character).

Hannah G. Y. F.

This place is great - unless you're into the monotony of wine culture these days. Upon entering the tasting room you are surrounded by barrels in various stages of processing, manual corking machines, and the ribbons of labels that they press onto each bottle.

The pitch is that they process grapes in an 'old world style'. They don't add sugar, they ferment on native yeasts, and in each bottle there is 'nothing but the grapes'. Apparently it also takes them a year or more to produce a bottle. It was eye-opening to hear about their process considering that my understanding is that modern wineries process field to shelf in a few weeks or months. However, in retrospect I don't know why I was so blown away considering this is how people made wine for millennia prior to modern processing technology.

The tasting is pretty standard - you pick out a few you'd like to try and there is a rate of $3-$5 for the flight. They waive it if you buy something. I liked the wines because they are dry and rich - not sugary/watery at all. The wines I tried (Chardonnay, Lemberger, Merlot and they threw in a couple tastes of their blends) were unique to what I've experienced elsewhere in the Gorge, but delightful nonetheless.

I guess what I liked most is that this is not one of your normal wine experiences. You're not surrounded by a faux-winery setting, there is not some 'know it all' telling you what you taste, and the wine is real. It's not sweet and it's not (yet) something that your wealthy family friend is going to have in his or her custom wine cellar. It's counter-culture, it's like time travelling to the old world but getting to take new age knowledge with you - and I love it.

Kelly H.

Rural, hillbilly wine excursion? The winery is just before Domain Poullion and is like entering another dimension. The driveway is this crazy grass entrance barely wide enough for a car to get through. You get out and you're looking for the wine tasting room and it's hidden way back in this garage that took us a few minutes to find. You'll find broken down cars, machinery, weeds, random stuff, chainsaws, trash, jars with strange fruit and juice, you name it. The entrance is this sliver of a doorway you're slightly afraid to enter, that the door might suddenly slide shut and you'll never get out again. The tasting room is a hippie hoarder's delight.

Okay, okay the wine. Organic wine is doable. I've seen and tasted it. Pheasant Valley Winery in Hood River is great and hospitable and tasty and... Tasteful? Two Chardonnays. The organic one is fizzy with a nutty flavor at the end. The server says the fizz is from the sugars left over during the bottling process and because they don't use sulfites, this is a normal reaction. The nutty flavor is from the yeast. Talking to other wineries, neither of those things are good qualities. Actually you even mention Klickitat to other wineries, and they give you a look of total understanding.

They charge $3 a taste. Not per tasting, but per taste. We tried three different wines and they were all terrible. The wines that you think might be tasty, like a Tempranillo rose or a white blend, they won't let you try. Only part of the wine club membership. Here's the kicker: who would buy a membership without getting to taste the good wines? I saw something about a couple wines with awards but you can't try those.

Meanwhile in the back room, a child is screaming bloody murder. The server didn't know much about the wines beyond the organic non-sulfite process, didn't have recommendations of his own wine, looked kind of stoned, and overall didn't appear to want to be there. Not mean, not rude, just... Disinterested?

Oh, but they have chickens! It's an experience. Looking for a different kind of winery, this is it! I've been to every winery from Underwood to Maryhill multiple times and there's no place like it. Washington wineries in the gorge, in my opinion, are better than the ones in Oregon. In this case, if you're looking for standard winery fare, avoid this one. Cor, Syncline, Domain, Memaloose, and Tetrahedron are fantastic experiences and offer phenomenal wine in the Lyle/Klickitat region.