In the Columbia River Gorge, the Food and Wine are as Epic as the Nature

At Buona Notte winery in Cascade Locks, Oregon, my husband and I found winemaker Graham Markel's pét-nat zippy and the appetizer table piled high with melon and prosciutto. Platters of salad, grilled potatoes with salsa verde, and roast pork covered several candlelit tables festooned with wildflowers. We'd come for a late-spring feast to celebrate the seven local growers from whom Markel sources grapes to make his delicious Italian-style wines. He is one of a handful of young winemakers (not to mention cidermakers, like Jasper Smith and Ella McCallion of Son of Man, who make their wild-fermented Basque-style brews in the same space as Markel) who are putting the Columbia Gorge on the wine map. This renegade group might not have the slick tasting rooms and award-winning Pinot Noirs of Oregon's better-known Willamette Valley, but they make up for it with their zeal for what they do and the land on which they do it.

While the Columbia Gorge has been an official American Viticultural Area for only 20 years, people have been growing grapes here since the 1840s. Formed by ancient volcanoes and glacial floods, the Columbia River, which starts in British Columbia and empties into the Pacific, spends the last 309 miles of its 1,243-mile length dividing Oregon and Washington. Eighty miles of that borderland is the Gorge, a deep river canyon of dramatic basalt cliffs, waterfalls, and some of the prettiest trails in the Pacific Northwest. For years the town of Hood River, on the Oregon side, was the main attraction for its world-class windsurfing and, more recently, its craft breweries, but we chose to stay across the river in White Salmon, Washington, closer to some of the area's new wineries and restaurants. Perched high on a cliff, the town has the best bakery in the Gorge, a charming wine bar, and stunning views of Mount Hood on a clear day.

I had stayed at a few hotels on previous trips (the luxe cabins at the Society Hotel and the high end glamping-style tents at Skamania Lodge); this time we decided to stay in the cedarwood-and-corten-steel environs of the new Iconica and the sweet Inn of the White Salmon. Most days we woke early and hit the trails. We'd unknowingly timed our visit perfectly with wildflower season, and on the Catherine Creek loop, we found the landscape a riot of purple lupines and yolk yellow balsamroot. After each hike we made a beeline for White Salmon Baking Co. and rewarded ourselves with blueberry polenta cake or mushroom scrambles.

White Salmon has only about 2,600 residents but a restaurant circuit worthy of a much larger town. We had excellent carnitas tacos at Pixán Taqueria & Cantina, perfectly cooked steak with crispy potatoes at Henri's, and a delicious burrata served with mint pesto at the tasting room Soča Wine Shop & Bar. Much credit for the town's thriving food scene goes to California-native Nina Jimenez and Slovenia-born Jure Poberaj, an entrepreneurial couple who opened White Salmon Baking Co. and Soča before selling both to focus on their winery, Poberaj Wines. One afternoon I drove into the hills above White Salmon to visit them. After Poberaj, the nephew of natural winemaking pioneer Joško Gravner, led me past the clay amphora he'd just buried in the ground, we tasted wines directly from the barrel.

“We're very serious about having fun,” said Malia Myers, who, along with Melaney Schmidt, founded Landmass Wines. I laughed as she and Schmidt showed me around the winery they opened in Cascade Locks in 2023: Wine tanks are named after female screen characters, like Regina (from Mean Girls) and Oksana (from Killing Eve). The couple built their business via Instagram, doing home deliveries during the pandemic.

As at Buona Notte and Landmass, there's a hands-on ethos at Loop de Loop, Julia Bailey Gulstine's winery on nearby Underwood Mountain; she and her husband, Scott, built the interior of their tasting room themselves. She poured me a glass of her Borderline Red Pinot Gris, which had a surprising pinkish-orange shade. As we wandered into the forest—where she pointed out a ghost orchid, evidence of healthy soil—we talked about her peripatetic career path. A former aid worker in the Middle East, she caught the wine bug when a Palestinian winemaker friend dropped a bunch of grapes on her doorstep. “I bought kiddie pools to macerate the grapes and used a sheet to strain the juice,” she said. “It actually turned out pretty good.” Once back in Oregon she started making wine before she and Scott moved to the Gorge in 2019. Walking back through their organic vineyard, the wind whipping my hair, I realized that it's the winemakers, as much as the land itself, that make this place still feel so refreshingly untamed.

This article appeared in the July/August 2025 issue of Condé Nast Traveler. Subscribe to the magazine here.