Bookwalter notes:
A range of wines from this Washington state producer at an event held in Vancouver.
2005 Chardonnay Viognier – intended as a wine to be drunk when young, it showed decent fruit in the nose, fair length, pleasant and forgettable.
Lot 19 – these blends are made from young vines fruit taken from 2 or 3 different vintages. This one used 2002, 2003 and 2004. Big sweet fruit nose a tad warm, but certainly with good intensity and pretty good length. The tannins became nmore evident with airing. Cab, merlot, cab franc, syrah, petit verdot…..
Lot 20 – produced the next year from 2003, 2004, and 2005 fruit. Simpler sweeter nose featuring more oak, a forward wine but with harder tannins. They used more syrah in this. I don’t think it improved it. I preferred the Lot 19
1997 Cabernet – these are also a blend including just about any of the traditional Bordeaux varietals. Pretty nice mature Bordeaux style nose, skightly lean in mid-palate with lots of terminal acidity. Not a very good vintage.
2004 Cabernet – Coffee and vanilla nose with some caramel, the wine still tight and undifferentiated, but clearly superior to the 1997.
2004 Merlot – sweet nose, sweet on palate, bit tight and a slight terminal bitterness but drinks fairly well.
2003 Merlot – primarily oak in the nose and much more charred than the 2004 showed. Sweet entry, then tightens up a couple of seconds later. Lots of tannin – needs time.
2002 Merlot – drinking best of the three. Slight pong in the nose blows off and you can see more development in both nose and on palate. Softer wine.
2003 Chenin Blanc – intended to be an off dry wine. Almost no nose, and what there was had an unpleasant edge. Showing some acid but in the end an insipid and forgettable wine.
Conclusion? Decently made wines with little hope of success in our market at around $59 for the Cab – just too much else out there in that range. The ‘Lot’ wines sell for under $10 at Costco and would be $30 in BC – not much incentive there.