Drink of the Week: The Walls Stanley Groovy Lip Stinger 2024
An industrial stretch of Walla Walla, Washington , isn’t the most pastoral winemaking backdrop.
But The Walls’ Downtown-adjacent winery and welcoming tasting room is home to legitimately great wines. Stanley Groovy Lip Stinger, a blend of Northern Rhône white wine varieties grown in nearby Yakima Valley. Lip Stinger is a “serious” wine that doesn’t take itself too seriously.
It’s thoughtfully made and has layers of flavors and complexity, but is also approachable enough to pop open without ceremony at a cookout or on your couch. These are among my favorite types of wines to drink in any season, but especially on languid summer evenings when cheeseboards and tomato salads are the only things I want for dinner. The wine combines Grenache Blanc, Roussane, Picpoul, Viognier, and Marsanne grapes from The Walls’ French Creek Vineyard near the Yakima River.
It has juicy pear, white peach, citrus, and honeysuckle flavors, plus a pleasantly waxy texture and minerally finish. Whole-cluster pressing and fermentation in concrete eggs, stainless steel, and neutral and new oak barrels gives it ample energy and intrigue, as does all the time it spent aging on its lees.
Summer wines don’t have to be simple—and there’s nothing keeping you from sipping something this fresh all year long. thewallsvineyards.com , $32