Wineries in the state of Washington make over 17 million cases of wine every year. We have about 400 grape growers, 60,000 acres of wine grapes in Washington state, and over 1,000 wineries according to washingtonwine.org.

80 different varieties of wine are produced in Washington state every year! The Columbia Valley seems to be perfect for making wine. And you can't do that without a little help from Mother Nature. The climate and soil that produce some of the best wine fruits in the world are equal to those of France and Italy.

Several millenniums ago the floods from ancient Lake Missoula brought with it soils that are perfectly suited for growing wine grapes in our area. And all of that beautiful basalt lava rock that we use in our landscaping has actually created a bedrock that makes wine growing in Eastern Washington possible.

Wineries in our area are growing! Washington State gets nearly four new wineries every single month on average. I live in West Richland and watched a hillside between here and Benton City turn into a giant grape growing venture.

Reasons to buy ONLY Washington State wine:

**I have several friends in California, but Californians, in general, are nervewrackin'.

**If you drink French wine and get in a fight, you'll surrender.

**Italian wine does not go with Spaghetti-O's. I like Spaghetti-O's.

**The passes are closed in the winter and your imported wine isn't coming anyway.

** I'm drinking a Columbia Valley wine as I type this and it's doing the job just fine. What was I talking about again? Anyway, I'm in a good mood and hope you have a nice day.

LOOK: Best Beers From Every State

To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.

LOOK: Food history from the year you were born

From product innovations to major recalls, Stacker researched what happened in food history every year since 1921, according to news and government sources.
 

More From 102.7 KORD