When most people think about Washington state, they are likely to conjure thoughts of the dreary, rainy confines of Seattle.  This makes sense as nearly 75% of the state’s population reside in the Puget Sound Lowlands.  However, when talking about winegrowing, 99% of the state’s grape production comes from vineyards east of the Cascade mountains where the climate is arid yielding a paltry 6-9 inches of rain a year.  Washington is the second largest premium wine producer, behind only California, and boasts more than 650 wineries and over 165,000 tons of grapes harvested in 2009.  The foundation for the state’s accelerated growth of quality grapes and wine can be found in the dirt and the air.

Geography and Geology 

While there are many books that can explain the depths of historical geological change in the area, I’ll briefly mention the Missoula floods here as described to me by local growers.   Roughly 15,000 years ago glacial dams positioned further north and east near the tip of Idaho and the Canadian border broke dozens of times and each time released powerful raging waters that transported dirt and rock through the region as they hurried southwesterly toward the Pacific Ocean via the Columbia River.  The results are rocks, silt, silty loam, loamy silt and basalt imparting unique qualities to soils in this region leading to high quality wine grapes.  This uniqueness is evident when looking at a map of the American Viticultural Areas (AVAs) where several accumulate in the south-central portion of the state near the Columbia River where the floods travelled. 

Washington AVA Map

Rocky Soil

Climate 

As mentioned above, the eastern part of the state is pretty much a desert with very little precipitation, therefore, irrigation is absolutely necessary.  Grapevines can flourish and produce high quality fruit when a regulated deficit irrigation strategy is implemented.  Many find the use of irrigation controversial from a natural, conservation and “green” perspective.  While in Walla Walla last week, we were told there was a moratorium on water rights at least to the Red Mountain AVA, though news this week promised the region would receive re-directed water from the Yakima River by an approved $12.5 million project.  Currently, only 1,000 of 1,700 plant-able acres are cultivated in Red Mountain. 

Lucky for us, the temperatures for this time of year were very tolerable on this trip as highs were only in the mid to upper 80′s and lows in the 60s.  While the sun was generally hot at the peak of day, the breeze helped keep us cool.  Due to the higher latitude, there are more daylight hours, which we experienced as we awoke to sunshine at a brisk 5:00 am and witnessed sunset around 9:30pm.  The combination of more daylight and larger diurnal temperature differences allow grapes to hang longer on the vine, reach optimal ripeness when expected, improve complexity and achieve appropriate acid levels. 

Wines 

While Washington has historically been known for Riesling and Merlot, many wineries, such as Delille Cellars (and their second label, Doyenne), are going after European style blends emulating regions such as Cote Rotie, Chateneuf-du-Pape and Bordeaux.  There are unique white blends that include Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscadelle, Muscat Canelli, et al, providing for significant flowery and perfume aromas.  But, there are also a few wines that are overdone, manipulated, and single-dimensional.  Is it normal to add Syrah to your Sangiovese Rose’ to add color?  The leading white grapes produced in Washington are currently Riesling, Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc while popular reds are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah.  The bottom line is that many varieties are being grown successfully here resulting in very high quality wines, and provides a great selection for wine lovers to explore. 

What is your experience with wines from Washington? 

2007 Delille Chaleur Estate

After about 18 months, our 2008 Laurel Hills Syrah Alder Springs vineyardhas been birthed from it’s French oak barrel and finally bottled and ready for consumption.  It was a great experience working with the folks at Crushpad.  Their new facility in Napa (they used to be in SF) is coming along nicely as landscaping was still going in while we were there.  I was shooting for a more elegant style of Syrah like that coming from the Northern Rhone.  The wine is still a little tannic as expected, but will mellow over time.  The color is a dark and deep violet with aromas of dark berries and a rich, textural mouthfeel.  I can’t wait to see how this continues to mature.

Alder Springs is made up of 31 blocks on 140 acres in Mendocino and is known for producing high quality fruit thanks to the painstaking vineyard management practices insisted by the owner, Stu Bewley.  Other more well-known winemakers using fruit from this prestigious vineyard include James Hall (Patz & Hall), Pax Mahle (Wind Gap), Les Behrens (Erna Schein), among many others.  

The bottling process was pretty simple and happened in a space that was only about 15 x 10 where me, my wife Jonjie, Eric (videographer/social media guru for CP) and Pete, the main bottling dude, bottled and packaged about 25 cases of wine.  Below is the compiled video Eric put together for Crushpad, with a quick cameo of me and Jonjie within.  I would highly recommend Crushpad to anyone who is interested in making their own wine and want the flexibility to decide how involved, or not, they’d like to be, yet have the reassurance that winemaking professionals are involved along the way.

So, if you had the chance, would you want to ever make your own wine and why?

In 2008 we hooked up with Crushpad to begin making one barrel of Syrah.  In hindsight, it couldn’t have been worse timing to spend that much cash with the great recession beginning to show its ugly mug.  Regardless, I was (and still am) interested in making wine and this was a way to learn the process from a distance (since I live in Atlanta) and be as involved as I wanted to be along the way.  I wanted to make a Syrah reminiscent of the Northern Rhone and we began by selecting some choice fruit from the Alder Springs vineyard in Mendocino county.

Crushpad walks the customer through the winemaking decision process via an easy to use webpage (crushnet.com) which can only be accessed by the customer and includes setting up a plan to define what style of wine you want to make (fruit, color, tannin, use of oak, etc.) as well as status updates along the way (nutrients added, punch downs, SO2 additions, top offs, etc).  You are also assigned a wine consultant who is responsible for implementing your plan and working with you when decisions are necessary as well as schedule visits if you are interested in sorting, performing punch downs, pressing as well as bottling.

In October of 2008 upon completion of fermentation, I flew to San Francisco to accompany and “supervise” the pressing of my half-ton bin of Syrah.  This also allowed me to perform some other winery duties giving me some hands-on experience including punch downs of several bins that were still fermenting.  Tasting the wine coming directly from the press was a cool experience and we were able to gauge level of tannins, which were substantial, at this time.  Then, the wine went to barrel where it stayed for another year and half with only VA, pH, TA analyses and top-offs occurring periodically during that time.

Well, we have now arrived where the barrel aging process is complete and we are ready to bottle.  Luckily for us, we have already planned a trip to Napa this week to celebrate my wife’s birthday and we are going to take the opportunity to participate in the bottling operations now that Crushpad has moved their operations to the Napa area.  The result will be 25 cases or 300 bottles of wine.  I will follow up with some more information and hopefully video and pictures from the operation upon our return.

Cheers!

When we visited Montemaggiore Winery we had the opportunity to try their 2002 Syrah Paulo’s Vineyard, which is their flagship wine.  Here it is 2010 and they still have some 2002 hanging around.  There are still great discounts to be had with this wine and it is really drinking nicely right now as I mentioned during our Syrah Madness tasting back in March.

“It was inky with candied black fruits and pepper on the nose.  The palate presented deep blackberries and raspberries and had the longest finish of the nite.  Just tremendous.”

So, while talking to Vincent about the wines he shared with us the fact that their marketing consultants had encouraged them to change their labels just a few years ago.  As you can see by the snapshots, this was quite a change.  Montemaggiore describes the Paulo’s vineyard as their “flagship wine [which] epitomizes elegance, subtlety, and sophistication.”  If you take a look at the older label I would certainly consider it more whimsical and colorful than elegant and sophisticated.  Additionally, looking at the new label I think they did a good job of matching the package with their message.  What do you think?  When wines that display yellow fish or orange kangaroos on their labels seem to catch the attention of many wine drinkers these day, does it make sense to go back to plain, 2-toned, torn-paper look?

Some other minor changes to notice:

Front

• Addition of “Estate Grown”
• Addition of raised/stamped seal that says “mountain grown – estate wines”

Back

• Addition of  ”exclusively”
• Removed “family’s”
• Replaced “hillside” with “mountain”

With the NCAA tourney just ended, I now present the results of our 2nd annual March Madness wine tasting where the host determines what wine-related madness we all will venture into while watching college hoops.  Last year was the inaugural Bordeaux Madness, in which 9 wines from the Bordeaux region of France were pitted against each other in true bracketology form.  The 2005 Ch. Du Glana held it’s own and made it to the finals only to fall to the powerhouse 1985 Ch. Palmer.  Would we have another Cinderella v. Stalwart situation this year, more in line with the actual Butler v. Duke finale?  This year, the focus was Syrah.  The links on each wine below will take you to the community tasting notes on CellarTracker/GrapeStories if there are any.

2003 Clarendon Hills Shiraz Baker’s Gully – This wine showed some age, clear around the edges when viewed at an angle in the glass.  Witnessed stewed/candied fruits and a mineral finish.  When tried again a little later, portrayed some smoky notes, but had a disappointing short finish.

2008 Trader Joe’s Shiraz- The joke of the evening, the 16-seed, if you will.  But, really the test of the evening, to see how it would fare in the competition and see if our taste buds were sharp.  There is a great inside story with our tasting group this night, where a friend at a blind tasting last year swore up and down how Trader Joe’s just blew only to realize the wine of the night he picked was indeed a Trader Joe’s wine.  Talk about egg on face.  Anyway, this wine had a light-medium hue, which was a concern since Syrah is a grape that contains higher levels of pigment, so these types of wines are generally much darker and even inkier at times.  The nose displayed perfume and flowers, had a decent mouthfeel and was a little minerally at the end.  Everyone at the table pegged this one tonight as the dud that went home early.

2003 M. Chapoutier St. Joseph Les Granits- Got a little old world, horsey funk on the nose with green pepper and herbaceousness.  There was mineral on the palate and a nice spicy finish.  A second round a little later showed that the funk had reduced showing more fruit on the nose.  This one had much bigger tannins resulting in more texture and pucker factor.

2003 E. Guigal Hermitage – The hue gave away its age, with red-orange brick colors.  Fruits were stewed on the nose and it was very chewy showing rich tannins and astringency.  A second review an hour later gave way to more fruit and pepper.

2007 D’Arenberg Shiraz The Footbolt- Beautiful deep, dark color.  Very obvious green peppers and veggies on the nose.  Awesome mouthfeel and spice on the palate.  This is smooth, rich and balanced.

2002 Montemaggiore Syrah Paulo’s Vineyard- This was a wine my wife and I had just brought back from our Sonoma vacation trip and were very excited that everyone liked it so much.  It was inky with candied black fruits and pepper on the nose.  The palate presented deep blackberries and raspberries and had the longest finish of the nite.  Just tremendous. 

The top two wines were the D’Arenberg and the Montemaggiore with the Montemaggiore taking the crown.  It has aged well and might still do well for another couple of years.  Montemaggiore means “Major Mountain” in Italian and is a biodynamically farmed vineyard.  They only produce about 1500 cases a year and the wife is the winemaker while the husband, Vince, does the rest.  Their vineyard site is well-suited to the Rhone varieties due to the fact it is 7 degrees cooler than the surrounding areas in Dry Creek Valley due to its elevation.  I will be writing a post specifically about our visit to the winery soon, so keep an eye out for that.

Please share with us more of your experiences with Syrah/Shiraz!

Cheers!