Over the last several years, Rulo Winery has become one of our regular stops - and usually our first - when wine tasting and buying in the Walla Walla valley. The owners, Kurt and Vicki, are incredibly friendly and helpful. It is nice to visit a winery where the owners and wine makers are there to answer questions in person.

Rulo has a great variety of red and white wines. Their viognier is one of the best you will find in the state, and they make several different excellent chardonnays, both oaked and unoaked to appeal to any palate. If you are a red wine fan, their syrahs and cabernet sauvignon are not to be missed! These are fantastic wines at very reasonable prices. You can easily buy a mixed half case for under $150, and you will not be disappointed in any of them. Rulo is not on all of the maps in the wine tourism publications, and they mainly only sell from the tasting room and in select restaurants. They do submit some wines to reviewers, and routinely receive 90 to 94 point scores, for those of you who pay attention to that sort of thing!

In short, Rulo offers superb wines at very reasonable prices, a fun and relaxed atmosphere, and many laughs as you are able to chat with the owners. I highly recommend them! One visit and they are sure to become a favorite of yours, too.

Rulo winery was our first stop in a weekend's worth of tastings in Walla Walla and we couldn't have hoped for a better start.
Walking into the tasting area of their spotless winery, Vicki greeted us with a smile and a handful of glasses, meanwhile a friend of the family stepped outside to retrieve the winemaker from hitting golf balls out back.
A visit to Rulo winery's website will explain that the entire affair is micro managed by the husband and wife team with an abundance of passion and the expressed goal of transparency and clear communication regarding their wines and their process.
I'm happy to report that a visit to Rulo in person more than substantiates the charming and favorable impression left by their website. Kurt and Vicki are excellent hosts, their facility is spotless, their wines are well made, thoughtful, and downright delicious.
If you are a fan of lean, crisp, mineral driven white wines, their Combine bottling fits the bill. High acid, food friendly Rosé? Look no further. Balanced fruit, acid, and earthy, funky terroir? Their Syrah, sourced from 2 different vineyards on Wahluke Slope and 1 vineyard on Red Mountain, was one of the best bottles of Syrah we tasted all weekend.
Listening to Kurt and tasting through the line up, each Rulo bottling was a considered and thoughtful approach to allowing the varietal(s) express their terroir and varietal characteristics. The wines were consistently excellent, across all of the offerings.
When Vicki found that we had arrived for the weekend without dinner reservations, she promptly got on the phone and secured our dinner seats for the two nights we were staying in town.
While we had never even heard of Rulo prior to planning our trip, we did encounter several other people over the weekend who were familiar with Rulo and they all had the same thing to say. Fantastic people. Great wines. A true gem.

Full Disclosure: Our party of two couples made an initial order of 4.5 cases of wine.

Four of us visited Walla Walla on a wine-tasting spree for 6 days. Went to 45 wineries and tasted more wines than we count count. Our favorite was Rulo. You have to make an appointment, but was not difficult to do. The owners-operators, Kurt and Vicki, are the people who greet you, pour the wines, and talk to you about the winery, the city, or whatever else. So friendly -- we started talking about places to have dinner in WW and when we mentioned one place we wanted to go in a couple of days (Saffron), Vicki said we would need reservations, picked up the phone and called restaurant for us -- we just did get the last slot, so we are vry grateful. She and Kurt also gave us some other recommendations and pulled up a map to show us how to get there. In any case, we found the wines to be excellent across the board and the prices are excellent, especially for such a small, boutique operation. If they had a wine club we would join in a minute. If you are in Walla Walla and doing some wine tasting, by all means take the time to reserve a tasting at Rulo.

We loved this place and the wines! Beautifully designed, Rulo is the creation of a perfectionist who is passionate about winemaking.