It's a bit early to start doing the Snoopy dance celebrating the quality of the 2005 vintage in Walla Walla.

When I visited in early September, the first grapes had not yet been picked. But there is good news. Unlike last year, there will be grapes to pick. A quick and killing freeze in January 2004 wiped out almost the entire Walla Walla harvest. But this year Mother Nature has been kind, even generous. A nice mix of cool weather, midsummer showers, and a long, warm, gentle late summer has produced some of the best-looking grapes ever in vineyards all around the valley.

Standing in mid-row, winemaker Christophe Baron picks a few juicy syrah grapes from a low-hanging bunch in his Armada vineyard. Smooth, slightly flattened rocks the size of baseballs cover the dusty earth; the vineyard is planted on a dry river bed. It is now in its fifth leaf, and the grapes, he notes happily, are "starting to feel velvety."

Even in a good year, growing good wine grapes involves an incredible amount of work. Baron owns five vineyards, all hand-planted in the hard, stony ground. Half of his 50 acres of grapes are on their own rootstock, a risky strategy that leaves them susceptible to the devastating root louse phylloxera. But he believes that the rocks will provide some protection, and that own-rooted vines are healthier overall and more able to capture the subtle characteristics of the grapes.

In pursuit of that often-abused term terroir — the fullest expression of grape, soil, site and climate — he also uses native yeasts for his fermentations (most wineries inoculate with purchased yeasts). He drops half his crop on the ground long before harvest, stresses the vines further by denying them water, and goes so far as to send his workers through the vineyards days before harvest to pluck individual green berries from the ripe bunches.

Baron chews on a handful of syrah, tasting the sweetness, the acid, the tannin; then carefully inspects the pulp and pips for color. Lab samples will be taken, and numbers will be run, but like many of his peers, Baron will rely on his own experience and sensibilities to tell him when to pick.

This will be his ninth vintage in Walla Walla, though most of his plantings are younger. His new Cayuse winery building, situated adjacent to the Armada vineyard, is a simple, corrugated metal box, 50 feet by 100 feet. "I refuse to call this building a winery," he says. "To me it is a wine studio; a production studio. We're here to work, to create."

Baron was one of the few Walla Walla growers to get a full crop in 2004, partly because of his unique site, and partly because he went to the considerable trouble and expense of burying canes before winter set in, which saved the vines. Although his 2004 wines will not be released for another year or more, he led me through a barrel tasting of a dozen unfinished wines from his En Cerise, En Chamberlin, Cailloux and Armada vineyards.

The syrahs are among the most intense and distinctive in the country, already showing the sort of Old World complexity that is a winemaker's Holy Grail. "I don't want to be part of globalization," he explains. "Purity, integrity and personality are being lost."

Meanwhile, at Klipsun vineyard on Red Mountain, harvest is already well under way. Owners Patricia and David Gelles grow more than 120 acres of mostly red grapes. They make no wine of their own but sell to roughly 30 different wineries, including many of the best in Washington. Klipsun vineyard merlot and cabernet grapes are among the most expensive and sought-after in the state, and the vineyard has been named by one publication as among the top 10 vineyards in the world.

So harvest is a happy time, and winemakers anticipating the start of picking are like little kids staring at the clock early on Christmas morning. We arrive on a picture-perfect, balmy September day; in the next hour at least half a dozen winemakers drive through — Ben Smith of Cadence, Mike Neuffer of Nicholas Cole, Rick Small of Woodward Canyon, Duane Wollmuth of Three Rivers and others. They stop briefly to chat about bunch size, sugar levels, pH, and who is picking what and when.

The morning's harvest of semillon and sauvignon blanc grapes sits in square, half-ton bins, carefully marked and waiting for each winery's trucks to arrive to haul them off to be pressed. Someone's rig is parked nearby, with a license plate that reads GRAPNUT.

Klipsun's neat rows of merlot, cabernet and other red grapes are tagged with signs reading "Boudreaux" and "Januik" and the names of dozens of other boutiques. The reds are still some time away from being ready. "I can see us going quite late into October for the cab," says Gelles, her bright purple hair gleaming in the midday sun. "It's been a good year," her husband, David, agrees; "temperatures never got so high that the vines shut down."

Smiles all around. This year, the grapes have developed under optimal conditions, and will likely get the extra hang time that generally brings on the biggest, ripest flavors. We're off to a good start. In an ongoing series of visits to vineyards and wineries around the state over the next few months, I'll keep you posted on vintage 2005.

Paul Gregutt is the author of "Northwest Wines." His column appears weekly in the Wine section. He can be reached by e-mail at wine@seattletimes.com.