I head over there every year and will try and set up a GCA weekend there in the spring.
I'm in, schedule permitting. I'll accept any excuse to play Wine Valley.
I've thought long and hard about this and I've come to the conclusion that it is highly unlikely that Wine Valley lacks the requisite 10 rater evaluations since its opening. Wine Valley is slightly less than a 4-hour drive from Seattle. That's closer than Palouse Ridge, which opened the same year and is ranked. Salish Cliffs, which opened this year, already has enough ratings to be ranked and it is not a convenient drive either.
No, Wine Valley is not ranked because Wine Valley is not liked -- by
Golf Digest raters that is. I think John Kavanaugh has it right when he says that Wine Valley is suffering the same fate as Rustic Canyon, Lawsonia, Barona Creek, Wild Horse, and Beverly. And Rich Choi offers a good explanation -- Pacific Northwest raters for
Golf Digest favor tree-lined fairways, fields of green, mountain vistas, and burly tee shots. Which means for me, at least, that
Golf Digest's recommendation of the "best of … anything" shall forever be taken with a grain of salt.