We started out Friday Morning at Pepper Bridge Winery on the southwestern edge of town. They poured two wines.
06 Pepper Bridge Merlot, $50
Expressive nose with plums, tobacco, dark chocolate and asian spice. Big bodied with velveteen texture. Includes 3% each Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Cabernet Franc. A.
06 Peppper Bridge Cabernet Sauvignon, $55
Plums, black cherry, minerals and a little earth. Silky tannins. Big bodied and elegant. Blend includes 8% merlot, 2% each malbec and cab franc. Sees 55% new oak, I might actually have guessed more. A. Writing all this and looking back, I'm thinking that if you took all the best wines of the trip, lined them up for me blind, and then lied that a California ringer had been placed therein and challenged me to find it, this would be the one I'd pick. In fact, the winery itself wouldn't look ill at ease in Napa Valley, either.
Next stop, a new-to-me winery called Waters. Overall, the wines were modest and inconsistent.
08 Waters Viognier, $25
Assertive minerality and white nectarine from young vines in their fourth leaf. Crisp and refreshing with no obvious oak. B.
08 Waters Rose
A co-ferment of 1/3 syrah and 2/3 viognier. Fresh and dry, good tank fermented style but somehow lacking anything to make it special. C+
07 Waters "Interlude"
Merlot heavy Bdx blend with cabs sauv and franc. Coffee, black currant fruit with skin tartness. C.
07 Waters Syrah
14.2% abv. Electrical magenta color. Dusty, sweet, extracted. C-.
06 Waters Cabernet
14.2% abv. Juicy, dusty, black cherry from mainly Cold Creek fruit. C+
Beresan Winery was next. Here they made one white and an admirable cadre of reds all of which were well-made medium weight, moderately priced wines (most were $25-$30) with good varietal definition and a consistent, distinct house style wherein the winemaker obviously tried to let the fruit speak for itself. I didn't taste everything they had available, but liked every thing I tasted. Only about 100 cases made of each wine. I don't believe I've had their wines before.
07 Beresan Semillon
Slightly cheesy nose with apple fruit and a slightly bitter aftertaste. C
06 Beresan Merlot
Cherry and violets, nice purity of flavor. B.
05 Beresan Stone River blend
35% cabernet, 25% each syrah and merlot, 15% Merlot and the rest Cab Franc. Complex, interesting, expressive. B++
06 Beresan Cab Franc
Also very good. Plummy red and black fruit with a hint of herbs. B+
06 Beresan Malbec
Sweet berry fruit entry finishes dry, and the wine's loaded with black pepper. Interesting! B++
06 Beresan Carmenere
Not a carmenere fan, but couldn't resist trying this one. Cactus pear and raspberry fruit with quite a bit of white pepper. Intriguing and different. B.
Our next stop was Chateau Rollat where owner Bowin Lindgren, a Bordeaux fan, has hired the guy who retired not long ago after making Chateau Latour for 20 years, Christian Le Summer (I didn't look up the spelling, but phoenetically this is what I heard) as his winemaking consultant. They produce a rose and three reds, one of which the winery was already out of called Sophie. The winery is named for Sophie and Edouard Rollat who emigrated to Washington earlier last century and started their own winery, which was then closed down by Prohibition. Not sure what the relationship between them and the winery's owner, if any, is.
07 Rollat Ardenvoir Rose
Lightly off dry and too much so for my taste, but not unlike the Bordeaux roses I've had. Didn't rate.
05 Rollat Bordeaux blend, $38
Savory blend of 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% merlot, and 5% cabernet franc aged in just 40%, tight grained new oak. Plummy with black cherry and coffee, gets the Bordeaux thing quite well. A-. I purchased two bottles.
05 Edouard, $62
Similar fruit constituency as above, but from Seven Hills fruit and with 70% new oak. Sweeter than the Rollat with grippier tannins. Also an A, and I purchased two bottles of this as well.
Sharing the same tasting room as Rollat was TRUST, whose winemaker takes a very non-interventionist approach.
07 TRUST Syrah, Columbia Valley, $28
Blue-black fruit with that starchy, brown paper bag taste I find often in young Washington syrahs. A three vineyard blend obviously unfined and unfiltered and with only 25% new oak.
07 TRUST Syrah, Walla Walla, $28
A little sweeter than the Columbia Valley but more complex with a streak of Cote Rotie-ish burnt rubber here. U/U too, and just 22% new oak. Should be a great barbecue wine; I bought two bottles.
Va Piano was next, and judging by the congested parking lot their big juicy fruit-forward, drink-now style is quite popular.
2008 Semillon
Modern, slick and sweet--good thing it has a lot of acid. C.
NV Bruno's Blend
A multi-vintage, multi-grape red blend that's both complex and crowd pleasing, and which impressed everyone in our group more than the single vintage wines below. And it was half the price. B.
06 Va Piano Cabernet
Big blackberry and black currant fruit, fruit forward, polished, modern, California style. Not what I like, but well done for what it is. B-/C+.
06 Va Piano Syrah
Big fruit, peppery, modern. B-/C+
Troy Ledwick makes wine for Hence Winery and was also pouring his own tiny production label, TL Cellars.
05 Hence Cultivar
A powerful, concentrated Cab/Mer/Syr blend sporting enough dill for me to ask about American oak use. Yes, Troy confirmed, along with French and Hungarian (there's a lot of Hungarian oak up here). Certainly an above average wine, but I'm not wowed and in a horizontal tasting I know I'd like it less than I do here by itself.
05 TL Cellars Release Number Two
100% Walla Walla Cabernet Suavignon from Les Collines Vineyard. Only French and Hungarian oak. Big, saturated cassis fruit with spice. A bit of jamminess lurks in the background. It's the Adam Lambert of Walla Walla wines: over the top, but high quality and I strangely like it. Moreover, I have friends who will LOVE it. I bought two.
05 TL Cellars Release Number Three
This is syrah made from Columbia Valley and Lewis Vineyard fruit. Less power and more delineation than the cabernet, suave and refined. It is in fact the best wine of the three poured here, but it won't be released until fall (probably because there's a fall barrel sample event).
After this we headed back into town to begin barbecuing two legs of lamb we'd acquired that morning from grower and vineyard manager extraordinaire Kenny Hart, who along with a bunch of other people was invited to dinner at our little rental that night. The wines flowed liberally, of course. I took no notes but remember the following:
2005 Forgeron Chardonnay (the oaked one)
A little sweet and a little heavy for me, but I didn't turn down a second pour.
2006 Chandler Reach Viognier
Bright and fruity, quite good.
2001 Saviah Une Valley 750 ml and 2005 Saviah Une Valley from magnum, both cabernet
Strangely, not much difference between the two wines: sweet, lightly oaked cabernet fruit. Both seemed kind of simple compared to the:
1997 Joseph Phelps Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa Valley (3.0 L bottle)
Plush, silky and sweet; tannins and acid are mostly gone now, and not much complexity. I preferred the:
1997 Chateau Potelle Cabernet Sauvignon, Mt. Veeder, Napa Valley (1.5L)
Big body, less sweet than the other cabernets with leathery secondary nuances amid the primary black cherry fruit and light herbs, and still with tannins to burn. Could hold here and even improve for years to come.
1995 Climens, Sauternes
Drinking well now. Apricot, lemon, lychees and a little ginger.
