Wine & Dine

Paul Gregutt
Wine adviser

The winemakers I’ve spoken to are quite pleased with the vintage just in.
A quick bloom during intense early June heat set the crop and encouraged even ripening. Later heat spikes shrunk the grapes and reduced the tonnage, but concentrated flavors and accelerated the onset of harvest.
The fall rains, which have caused problems in Oregon and parts of California, did little harm here, as the grapes were safely fermenting at most wineries by mid-October.
Meanwhile, new releases from the 2005 vintage are proving that Washington’s spectacular numbers growth is being closely matched by a rise in quality across the board. So many good wines are hitting retail shelves just ahead of the holidays that I can only offer highlights here as I don’t have the space to focus on each winery’s entire lineup, though many deserve it.
Here is a mixed case of outstanding new releases. They may be purchased from specialty retailers or — in most instances — ordered directly from the wineries themselves.
Arbor Crest - www.arborcrest.com
Arbor Crest 2004 Columbia Valley Syrah; $20
Washington is becoming known as the place for syrah, but few that are priced in the $20 range are this good. The key to success of course is the fruit, sourced from the Stillwater Creek and Sundance vineyards. Let this wine breathe for awhile and note the complex aromas of cured meat and smoke wafting over berry and currant fruit. This lovely and graceful wine will reward your time and attention; I found it took a full day for it to reach its flavor peak.
Des Voigne Cellars - www.desvoignecellars.com
Des Voigne Cellars 2005 ‘Montreux’ Syrah; $27
This small Woodinville winery makes a big statement with its colorful labels, featuring beautiful poster art graphics of famous jazz musicians. The star of the new lineup is this Montreux Syrah, a raw blast of wild berries, spicy cranberry and rhubarb. The chorus is tart and peppery, smoky and herbal, and it keeps on rocking through a wild and unrestrained finish.
Furion Cellars - www.furioncellars.com
Furion Cellars 2005 ‘Wicces Basium’ Red Wine; $25
This new producer has made a perfect wine for Halloween (Wicces Basium, says the winery, may be loosely translated as “witches’ kiss”). In any language it’s a supple Rhone blend of 60% syrah, 25% grenache and 15% mourvèdre. The fruit flavors are beautifully integrated and the finished wine is just 13.4% alcohol, which keeps it racy rather than sappy.
Gorman - www.gormanwinery.com
Gorman 2006 ‘Big Sissy’ Conner Lee Vineyard Chardonnay; $35
Chris Gorman first made his mark as a red wine specialist, but this luscious chardonnay, his first, shows him to be equally adept with white wines. A wild yeast fermentation in 100% new French oak really piles on the rich, butterscotch flavors of toast, nutmeg and caramel. Happily there is plenty of thick, powerful fruit to match.
J. Bookwalter - www.bookwalterwines.com
J Bookwalter 2005 Columbia Valley Merlot; $38
The 2005 continues along the established path of Bookwalter’s recent red wine releases – big, no holds barred, rich and jammy. The alcohol, at 14.8%, is not shy, and can be tasted in the finish. But the brambly fruit is ripe and nicely woven together, coated with appealing barrel flavors of coffee and chocolate.
L’Ecole No 41 - www.lecole.com
L’Ecole No 41 2006 Columbia Valley Semillon; $16
L’Ecole “owns” semillon in Washington, and it is hard to think of any winery in the country that does a better job with the grape. The fact that consumers do not seem to have jumped on the semillon bandwagon does not deter L’Ecole’s Marty Clubb – he offers four different bottlings, and sells out of them all. Put your preconceptions aside and try this delicious, rich and succulent wine with its deft flavors of nettle, lime, melon and vanilla custard.
Mark Ryan - www.markryanwinery.com
Mark Ryan 2006 Conner Lee Vineyard Viognier; $28
Rarely have I had a better viognier from America. This is a riot of citrus and stone fruits, lightly peppery in the mouth, but also creamy and textural. It’s generous, subtle and refreshing – not tiring – and designed to accompany a wide variety of sauces, cheeses, pasta and poultry.
McCrea Cellars - www.mccreacellars.com
McCrea Cellars 2006 Ciel du Cheval Vineyard Roussanne; $25
Roussanne, one of the six white grapes of the Rhone, is not often presented as a pure varietal, but Doug McCrea does a great job with this new release from Red Mountain’s Ciel du Cheval vineyard. Creamy and refreshing, it’s got plenty of texture and wet stone flavors to liven up the finish. This is a good option for chardonnay lovers who yearn for something new and different.
O•S - www.owensullivan.com
O•S Winery 2005 Champoux Vineyard Cabernet Franc; $30
O•S generally produces one of the best cab francs in Washington, and this is no exception. The aromas are lifted and intense, even a bit high-toned, but the wine is packed with juicy red fruit flavors and barrel notes of coffee and tobacco.
Seia Wine Cellars - www.seiawines.com
Seia 2005 Clifton Hill Vineyard Syrah; $30
Clifton Hill is one of the Milbrandt vineyards located in the Wahluke Slope AVA, and Seia is one of several small wineries making excellent syrah from this fruit. Ripe, concentrated flavors of plum and berry are accented with a streak of citrus, then finished with a hint of mint.
Sineann - www.sineann.com
Sineann 2006 Old Vine Zinfandel; $36
This is made from century-old vines at the Pines vineyard, on the Oregon side of the Columbia River gorge. Sineann’s Peter Rosback consistently makes the finest zinfandel in the Northwest from these grapes. Released at less than a year old, this wine shows bright primary flavors of ripe raspberries, with plenty of tart acid behind 15.6% alcohol. Though it’s a bigger style, it is reminiscent of the lovely Nalle zins from Dry Creek Valley – succulent and bursting with berries.
Vin du Lac - www.vindulac.com
Vin du Lac 2006 ‘LEHM’ Estate Dry Riesling; $20
The Lake Chelan region is just now reaching an age where some of the estate vineyards are settling in and beginning to show what this exciting new appellation-in-waiting is capable of. Vin du Lac’s ‘LEHM’ bottling is finely detailed with citrus rind, stone, light herb and yeast; the wine is nicely meshed and the flavors refined. Though almost completely dry, it is not lacking in substance, length or flavor.
Pick of the week
Washington Hills 2005 Merlot; $7
If there is anything more difficult to find than decent merlot under $8, I don’t know what it is. This new release includes 20% cabernet franc in the mix, which beefs it up and adds some herbal strength to the tannins. It opens up a bit hard and tannic, but give it a good airing (decant if possible) and it will soften up, adding layers of tea, tobacco and pepper. Think of a budget Chianti and you’re in the right ballpark. (Odom)
How to find recommended wines
Unless noted, all Wine Adviser recommendations are currently available, though vintages may sometimes differ. All wine shops and most groceries have a wine specialist on staff. Show them this column, and if they do not have the wine in stock, they can order it for you from the local distributor (noted in parentheses).

Paul Gregutt, author of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com.

Paul Gregutt
Wine adviser

Q. I am presently seeing red wines for retail sale that are a year or less old. I am willing to confess that I am unable to determine much about red wines at such a young age. My first question would be: How are other people able to determine so much at such a young age?
Second question — isn’t a winery cutting their nose off to spite their face when they place un-aged and poor quality wines on the market with their label on the bottles?
A. You are absolutely correct that many red wines are now being released at a very young age, far more than in the past. There are many reasons for this, among them:
• It’s very expensive for a winery to inventory wines.
• Consumers seem to be more interested in fresh, fruity flavors than in the complexities of mature wines.
• A lot of wines don’t improve with age.
• Winemaking has changed so that wines are designed to be consumed young.
• There is pressure from the wine press and trade to get new vintages out as soon as possible.
That doesn’t mean that all young red wines are bad wines, by any means. Many winemakers are crafting terrific red wines that are delicious upon release. Of more concern to consumers is the bottling date. You don’t want to drink a wine that has very recently been bottled; it will need a few weeks at least to settle down.
Shipping/transporting wines can also cause bottle shock. A few weeks of rest is usually the cure. With any very young red it is almost always beneficial to give it plenty of breathing time, by opening the bottle some hours before drinking the wine, and/or decanting it.

Paul Gregutt, author of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com.

Paul Gregutt
Wine adviser

Where do ordinary people go today if they want to build a winery business in California? Believe it or not, it’s still possible to do so, but you have to look beyond Napa and Sonoma.
Clay and Margarita Shannon didn’t have to look that far — just about 35 miles north of the Napa County line. They had both worked at industry giant Sutter Home, Clay as the vineyard manager, and Margarita in vineyard administration. Fruit grown in Lake County was being used in some Sutter Home wines, so when they married and decided to start a vineyard and winery of their own, Lake was where they landed.
Lake County is one of the four large regions that subdivide California’s North Coast AVA (Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino being the other three). It is the smallest, the most unusual (for its red soils, high mountains and massive freshwater lake) and the least known. It’s also cheap — roughly a tenth the cost of Napa Valley acreage. And cheap land, coupled with wine-friendly growing conditions and plenty of water, is what makes Lake County so extremely attractive.
In 1995, the Shannons purchased 400 acres in High Valley, a mountainous region northeast of the lake. They planted their vineyards at altitudes of 2,100 to 2,400 feet, starting with zinfandel, cabernet sauvignon, barbera and sauvignon blanc, and later adding petit verdot, syrah, roussanne, viognier, cab franc, mourvèdre and grenache. The red, rocky, volcanic soils and steep slopes (averaging 27 percent) had previously supported walnut trees and native plants such as manzanita, broom, Ponderosa pine and valley oaks. But they proved ideal for wine grapes.
So well-suited, in fact, that Shannon Ridge winery, begun in 2002, was named one of today’s 10 hottest small brands by Wine Business Monthly, an industry bellwether. Beginning Nov. 1, these wines will be available in Washington.
I very much enjoy the flavors that mountain-grown grapes bring to the glass. You will too if you want balanced wines with clean varietal character and alcohol levels that remain relatively moderate — rarely above 14.5 percent. Lake County is known best, if at all, for its sauvignon blancs, and the Shannon Ridge 2006 Sauvignon Blanc ($15) is bursting with the bright, tangy grapefruit and pineapple flavors of the region. Better still is the Shannon Ridge 2006 Viognier ($18) — a unique and potent wine scented with pungent herb, sweet grass and waxy lemon rind.
Shannon Ridge also makes a 2006 Wrangler Red ($18), a blend of zinfandel, cabernet and syrah, nicely fruity with accents of herb. The estate-grown 2006 Barbera ($22) is supple and plummy, front-loaded with sweet, pretty red fruits.
“If you like oak look somewhere else,” says Clay. “We’re not in the firewood business, we’re in the wine business.” Bravo! Shannon Ridge’s briary, herbal 2006 Zinfandel ($18) and dense, dark, saturated 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon ($18) are both exceptional for the price. Neither is oaked up. What all these reds deliver is pure fruit, zippy aromas that mingle that fruit with potent whiffs of herb and citrus, and substantial, yet appropriate tannins.
Another up-and-coming California wine region — this one well east of Napa — is Lodi. Forever tagged with the Credence Clearwater lyric (“oh Lord, stuck in Lo-di again …”) and a reputation for cranking out vast quantities of so-so grapes for huge corporate wineries such as Gallo, Fetzer and Woodbridge, Lodi has only recently begun to nurture small boutiques with a hands-on approach to winemaking.
It’s not new, just reinvented. Lodi has more than 90,000 acres of grapes and 750 growers. It produces roughly a fifth of California’s wine-grape total, yet has fewer than five dozen boutiques, most of them unknown outside the region.
But thanks to an excellent marketing initiative (which could serve as a model for some of the lesser-known regions in this state), Lodi’s smallest wineries are making a big splash. They are using their strong suit — old vine zinfandel — to spread the word about the region’s history and commitment to quality. Yes, Lodi is still California’s leader in the production of bland chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, merlot and sauvignon blanc, but none of these grapes top the production of zinfandel, and the zin is world class.
Forty percent of California’s zinfandel is grown here. Of particular interest are the old vine bottlings. Old vines is an unregulated term that can be abused, but rarely is. In practical terms, anything more than 30 years of age could legitimately be called old, but when you are speaking of old zinfandel vines that age can double, triple, or even quadruple!
Through the auspices of the Lodi Wine and Visitor Center and the Lodi-Woodbridge Winegrape Commission (www.lodiwine.com), 52 Lodi zins were blind tasted by a panel of judges, and a dozen winners were selected to be used to promote the region. From that group I’ve found six that seem to best show the ripe and brambly fruit flavors of old vines.
In some instances, the specific wines referenced here may have already sold out, but new vintages are available and the wineries can provide specific details. See the Web sites for particulars. My top six:

• Macchia 2005 “Generous” Old Vine Zinfandel — Soucie Vineyard ($22). These old vines average 90 years of age. Generous it is, rich, ripe and round with cooked fruit, baking spices and enough weight to offset the substantial (15.7 percent) alcohol. (www.macchiawines.com)
• Klinker Brick 2004 Old Vine Zinfandel ($17). There’s wonderful complexity here, with lush and spicy fruit, balanced with hints of allspice, clove, pepper and tobacco. These old vines average 65 years of age. (www.klinkerbrickwinery.com)
• Michael-David Vineyards 2005 “Earthquake” Zin ($25). It’s another big boy (15.9 percent), but sometimes jam-packed bottles prove irresistible. Smooth and delicious, this is loaded with cherry, fig and sweet date flavors, from 100-year-old vines. (www.lodivineyards.com)
• Jessie’s Grove 2004 Westwind “Gnarly” Zinfandel ($24). This is creamy and luscious, with black cherry and black licorice, 15 percent alcohol and a finish that tastes like espresso. (www.jessiesgrovewinery.com)
• Van Ruiten Vineyards 2004 Old Vine Zinfandel ($20). This broadly fruity blend includes petite sirah, petit verdot and syrah. It’s beautifully balanced with juicy acids and a spicy, peppery finish. (www.vanruitenwinery.com)
• Gnekow Family 2004 Campus Oaks Old Vine Zinfandel ($15). The budget star of the show, this soft, sweet wine is a perfectly lovely mix of pie cherry and fresh cut tobacco flavors. Very seductive! (www.gnekowwinery.com)

Pick of the week
Foppiano Lot 96, Bin 001 Red Wine, $10. Foppiano is one of the great value wine producers in California, family-owned and well over a century old. The Sonoma winery makes only red wines, and is best known for its petite sirah, although the entire portfolio is well-made and unpretentiously sound. This balanced blend of sangiovese, zinfandel and petite sirah deftly mixes berries, violets and spice. It’s a chunky, friendly wine that will happily accompany anything from pizza on up through braised short ribs.

Paul Gregutt, author of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com.

Paul Gregutt
Wine adviser

Q. We were horrified to see our host at a dinner party place a bottle of wine in the microwave and zap it for a good minute or so, supposedly to raise it to the proper serving temperature. This can’t be good for the wine, can it?
A. Getting wines to the quote unquote proper temperature is one of the thorniest challenges for any host. What exactly is the right temperature anyway? Well, there are plenty of stuffy wine books that can provide exact figures in Fahrenheit, Celsius and Kelvin if you desire, but by simply touching the bottle you can glean all the information you need.
White wines should feel cool, but not refrigerator cold — think of an underground cave and that’s about right. This is so-called cellar temperature.
Red wines should be about 10 degrees warmer, but cool enough to be below room temperature in most homes. It’s easier to chill wines down than to warm them up. Wine chiller sleeves that may be kept in the freezer and slipped over a too-warm bottle work very well and rather quickly. But if a wine is too cold to serve (it’s been sitting in a cold car, or a cold basement, for example) it requires a bit more care to warm it up. You do not want to overheat just part of it while the rest remains cold; it can be somewhat destabilizing to the flavors and aromas.
Some authorities suggest that putting the wine into a microwave for a minute or so is the best and quickest method for evenly warming it up without harming it. DO NOT do this with an unopened bottle, or with any bottle that has a metal cap or capsule. If you want to try the microwave approach (I don’t recommend it), first remove the wine from the bottle and put it in a microwave-compliant container. I would experiment with a cheap wine and a very low setting before trying this with a more valuable wine.

Paul Gregutt, author of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com.

Paul Gregutt
Wine adviser

There is some special magic to the autumn season that seems to spring wine surprises on you at every turn. This past week was a gem.
It began with an unexpected phone call from Matthew Loso, the winemaker and owner of Matthews Estate in Woodinville. “There’s someone you should meet,” he said, without indicating who or why.
My curiosity bone was rattled. Loso makes great wine and suffers no fools. We met at a bar in an area restaurant. I was introduced to Bowin Lindgren, owner of Chateau Rollat, and his consulting winemaker, Christian LeSommer.
Long story short: Lindgren spent 35 years “climbing the corporate ladder” with an East Coast pharmaceutical company, then retired with the goal of learning to make wine. He phoned LeSommer out of the blue and (says Lindgren) badgered him mercilessly until the poor man agreed to make a visit to Walla Walla, a place he’d never heard of. Lindgren had set up camp there in the autumn of 2004, hunting for grapes.
LeSommer is not a man who needs more work. Among the wineries listed on his résumé are Chateau d’Yquem and Chateau Latour, where he was general manager and wine master for more than a decade. Currently he is the consulting manager for Domaines des Barons de Rothschild.
They agreed on a plan, recalls LeSommer, to produce “the best possible expression of ripe Walla Walla fruit” — specifically, Bordeaux blends of Seven Hills and Pepper Bridge cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc and merlot.
The first releases of Chateau Rollat (ROLL-ah) are just out and, quite honestly, dazzling. The mid-level wine, a 2005 “Rollat” Cabernet Sauvignon ($38), presents supple, ripe and sweet fruit on a bed of fine tannins. The word that kept cropping up as I tasted the wine was “polished.” It has a sophisticated finesse that moves the beautiful fruit flavors into a more elegant dimension than all but a handful of Washington wines. The Rollat is available by the glass in some Greater Seattle area restaurants and a few wine shops. For specific purchase information call the tasting room at 509-529-4511.
Rollat’s still more substantial sibling is the 2005 “Edouard” Cabernet Sauvignon ($62), which will be released at barrel tasting weekend in Walla Walla in early December. All Chateau Rollat wines are being made at Va Piano for the moment, though a dedicated winery is in the planning stages. The Edouard, in French terms, is a vin de garde — a wine to put away for some years. “I hope it will be a giant among wines,” says the winemaker. Based on my first impressions (dark, smoky, nuances of bark, soil, subtle layers of earth and barrel) I believe it will.
Lest you cringe at the prices for the two wines just mentioned, here’s an update from the Napa Valley, where wines of comparable quality will cost two to three times as much. On a brief visit to Piña (www.pinanapavalley.com), an excellent boutique specializing in single vineyard cabernets, I was given an insider (grape grower/vineyard manager) overview of current costs for start-up wineries in the valley. Piña is owned by several brothers whose family roots in the Napa Valley go back to the 1850s. They make their living by selling grapes and hiring out as vineyard managers; the winery is mostly for their own amusement.
Good vineyard land in Napa today costs $300,000 an acre and up. It takes $50,000-$70,000 an acre to install the vineyard, and $30,000 per acre annually to farm it. That’s before you build a winery, purchase winemaking equipment and barrels, or begin to make wine. Even though good grapes are selling for as much as $10,000 -$12,000 a ton, it does not cover the costs of growing them. Growers as well as small wineries, say the Piñas, are being forced out of business. Draw your own conclusions about what is fair value for the wines.
That same day I toured a marvelous new tasting room, called the AVA room, at Napa’s Conn Creek winery. Here winemaker Jeff McBride has set out barrels of single vineyard cabernet sauvignon from each of Napa’s 14 sub-appellations (including the proposed Calistoga AVA). There are also barrels of the other four Bordeaux blending grapes — merlot, cabernet franc, petit verdot and malbec — and three barrels of wines aged in American, French and Hungarian oak.
Beginning early next year, visitors will be able to schedule appointments to taste through all of the different barrels, learn about the specific soils and other factors that create the flavors for each sub-AVA, and make a blend of their own, which they will bottle and take away. The cost for the tasting/blending will be in the $100-$150 range. It’s an experience that should provide a generous overview of the entire region in a single stop, as well as a lesson on the complexities of blending. For specific information on booking a visit, e-mail the winery (info@conncreek.com) or contact the winery concierge at 707-963-9100.
The week concluded with a revelatory bottle of an almost-40-year-old zinfandel. Many readers have written to express their concern over the rising alcohol content of many wines, particularly California zinfandels. An increasing number of them now top 16 percent and some reach beyond 17 percent alcohol, which puts them almost in the range of fortified wines. It is difficult, if not impossible, to drink such massive wines with food; they blow out all flavors except jammy fruit and chocolatey oak, usually with a burning finish. Nuance and detail? — forget about it!
So it was an almost-forgotten pleasure to visit the home of some wine-loving friends for their annual celebration of zinfandel, music and ribs, where the best wines of the night were both under 14 percent. A Nalle 2004 Reserve Zinfandel ($40) — the first in the winery’s history (www.nallewinery.com) — displayed the bright and brilliant raspberry fruit that used to characterize many of the best Dry Creek Valley zins. Young, sappy and seductive, it was a walk down memory lane for me, a return to a time when zinfandel was my California red wine of choice.
But the real shocker of the night was a 1969 Mirassou Monterrey/Santa Clara Zinfandel. Plucked from a temperature-controlled cellar, where it had rested since its release, the label read just 12 percent alcohol! In today’s wineries such a wine would be untenable, dismissed as green and unripe. And yet … it amazed us all. A lovely, burnished mahogany, it opened up quickly with scents and flavors of cooked cherries and berries, slid gracefully into still darker flavors of figs and smoky prunes, then hung a surprising left turn to end with a riveting, baking chocolate and lemon peel finish. Such epic wines convince me that although a great deal has been learned in recent decades about grape growing and winemaking, something important may have been lost.

Pick of the week
King Estate 2006 Pinot Gris, $16. Pinot gris, not so long ago, was virtually unknown in this country. When King Estate announced grand plans to specialize in the grape, in Oregon no less, it was as if someone growing grapes up in the Okanagan said they were going to specialize in gruner veltliner (not a bad idea, actually). Fast forward: Pinot gris (or grigio in Italy) has become a consumer favorite; King Estate is the country’s leading producer. This fruit-powered, iconic wine is a model for how to do it. Clean, fresh flavors suggest pears and apples, with good mid-palate concentration and a lively snap to the finish.

Paul Gregutt, author of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com.

Paul Gregutt
Wine adviser

Q. I have read your wine columns since I was on a sabbatical in Seattle a few years ago. Now that I am back in Korea, wine has become quite popular here.  Somebody gave me a wine gift a few months ago. It was a red wine of Chateau Tayac (Cuvee Tayac La Rauza), Margaux (AMC), 2003.  I opened it and found many red tiny balls on the inside surface of the cork. When I touched them, they felt like tiny sand-sized balls and they began to drop when I pushed them with my fingers.
Are they some residue of wine, evidence of rotten wine, a contaminated product of oak and wine, or whatever? I hesitated to drink it.
A. Your question is a good one, and I understand why you would be concerned about finding these hard deposits on the surface of your wine’s cork. They are crystalline deposits, completely natural and harmless. They sometimes form in wines (both red and white) that have not been completely stabilized before bottling. This is usually done by means of refrigeration and filtering just ahead of bottling.
Although these tartrates may look dangerous, especially in white wines, where they most often resemble glasslike shards rather than the sand-sized balls you describe, rest assured that they are not. They will not affect the flavor or ageability of the wine in any way, and if accidentally ingested they will cause no harm. If you wish to eliminate them, the easiest way is to decant the wine carefully, or pour it through a wire strainer.

Paul Gregutt, author of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com.

Paul Gregutt
Wine adviser

Kitty-corner from the intersection of Yellow Jacket Road and Chuckhole Lane, just across the border on the Oregon side of Walla Walla, the pickers are finishing up their morning’s work. The last of Tom Waliser’s Yellow Jacket vineyard syrah grapes are being snipped and sorted into small bins, where they will join the rest of the one-and-a-half ton steel fermenters already well into making the 2007 wines at his Beresan winery.
Waliser, a sun-baked vineyard manager and winery owner, squints his eyes and peers up at the blue sky.  “The best day of fall is today,” he says, “a perfect blue sky and a high of 79 degrees.” It is, in fact, the first day of autumn.
The Yellow Jacket vineyard was planted in 1999 on 7.5 acres that formerly grew peaches. It’s in an area called “The Rocks” by the locals, who began putting in grapevines after Christophe Baron (of Cayuse) first saw the potential of the rock-strewn soil, an ancient riverbed that reminded Baron of Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
Pointing to the earth and vegetation around his vines, Waliser makes it clear that he has just as many rocks as Cayuse, they are just not as visible. Christophe Baron tills his soil to bring the rocks up and shake off the dirt; Waliser lets his ground cover take over.
“I think there’s a classic difference between what Christophe is doing and what I’m doing,” he explains. “Both are right, but my philosophy is that Mother Nature wants to bring something up from the ground.
“As you look below the soil there’s a huge amount of microbial activity — a synergism between the vines and what goes on below. There are micro-rhizomes that will actually feed the plant sugars they excrete; they pull from the plant nutrients that the vine roots bring up from the soil. So I leave the ground cover undisturbed to encourage microbial activity. Plus we’re adding compost tea, fish oil and molasses. These are carbon-based products that feed the microbes. It’s an instant reaction — a candy bar for a microbe. The compost is the source and the other nutrients provide them with food.”
Waliser manages the Pepper Bridge, Seven Hills, Candy Mountain and Mirage vineyards, and owns another small estate vineyard near Yellow Jacket. He founded Beresan winery in 2001, hiring Tom Glase to be his winemaker. Beresan occupies a beautifully restored old barn adjacent to the Pepper Bridge vineyard and across the street from Saviah Cellars. Glase has his own winery, Balboa, in a newer building on the property.

He and I stood admiring the neat rows of fermenters, just finishing up the first round of merlot and syrah. Like Waliser, Glase was in an ebullient frame of mind.
“We’re about 10 days early,” he said, “still waiting on the cab franc, malbec and cabernet sauvignon. But the stems are yellow, the seeds are brown and it tastes really good. It’s amazing the change we’ve seen just in the last three days.”
Now in his ninth year of winemaking, Glase loves the work but doesn’t try to glamorize the long, hard hours, especially during crush. “It’s still extremely difficult for my wife to accept that I’ll leave the house at 6 a.m. and not be home till after 9 at night,” he says.
The Balboa wines sport brightly colored labels, screwcaps and moderate prices. New releases include a 2006 Balboa Syrah ($16), 2006 Balboa Merlot ($19), 2006 Balboa Cabernet Sauvignon ($19) and a blended red — 2006 The Cat’s Meow ($22). Except for this last, all are 100 percent varietal, made in a forward, moderately fruity style. I particularly liked the merlot for its flavors of ripe strawberries and the hint of white chocolate in the finish; and the Cat’s Meow, a sharp, tasty, bright and spicy young red wine, more structured than the other three.
Beresan will open its doors for the official release of its fall wines during the first weekend in November, but here’s a sneak preview:
The 2006 Beresan Semillon ($18) is a thrilling wine, among the best from that grape I’ve ever had from Washington state (or anywhere else for that matter). Luscious and 100 percent varietal, its flavors are dense and detailed — a mix of sweet grain, clover and beeswax along with fruit flavors of lychee, pear, white peach and pink grapefruit. Smooth and full-bodied, it lasts through a lingering, lightly honeyed finish.
Tops among the new Beresan red wines are an excellent 2005 Columbia Valley Merlot and a 2005 Walla Walla Valley Syrah, both $29 and 100 percent varietal. The merlot opens with smooth berry flavors, hints of soy and balsamic, and a dark, smoky finish. The syrah is still young and tightly wound, with juicy acids and flavors of tart berry and wild mountain fruit. It’s a blend of Pepper Bridge and Yellow Jacket vineyard grapes. As it opens in the glass, it starts to show smoked ham and bacon, with black pepper in the back. A single-vineyard 2005 Cabernet Franc and a 2005 Malbec from brand new vines complete the lineup for now, although November will bring the release of the much-anticipated 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon and 2005 Stone River blend.
Jumping across the street, I found winemaker Rich Funk busy with crush at his Saviah Cellars. Production there has ramped up almost to 7,000 cases, half of which is the wildly popular red blend called “The Jack” ($18), first written up in these pages two years ago. The current (2005) Jack is 88 percent merlot with small amounts of cabernet sauvignon, carmenère and syrah. Sweet and bursting with ripe red fruit flavors of strawberry preserves, raspberries and peaches, it’s easy to see why this has become such a consumer favorite.
Also new from Saviah is the 2005 Une Vallée Red ($32), a Bordeaux blend of 62 percent cabernet, 31 percent merlot and 7 percent cab franc. It’s done in a satiny, silky smooth style — plum, black cherry, blackberry and hints of prune, loaded with rich chocolatey oak. Saviah makes several different syrahs, of which the 2004 Stillwater Creek ($30) vineyard bottling is my favorite.
The 2006 Saviah Cellars Stillwater Creek Vineyard Chardonnay ($25) shows once again why that young vineyard is already proving to be quite a special site for white wine grapes. Bright, well-defined fruit flavors of pineapple, grapefruit and citrus add life and lift across the entire palate, and there is just the right touch of butterscotch and toasted almond in the finish.
Pick of the week
Don Miguel Gascon 2006 Mendoza Malbec, $12. Perhaps you’ve heard mutterings about malbec, a red wine grape that has begun winning admiration from a number of Washington wineries, including Alexandria Nicole, Barnard Griffin, Beresan, Reininger and Seven Hills. For now at least, Argentina is the undisputed world leader in these wines, and you can get a pretty good idea of why from this 100 percent malbec from Don Miguel Gascon. Imported by Gallo, it’s a dark and toasty wine, which mingles flavors of juicy blueberry fruit, mountain rock and barrel aging. It’s a bit unusual, fairly potent and ready for prime rib.

Paul Gregutt, author of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com.

Paul Gregutt
Wine adviser

Q. I have read your wine columns since I was on a sabbatical in Seattle a few years ago. Now that I am back in Korea, wine has become quite popular here.  Somebody gave me a wine gift a few months ago. It was a red wine of Chateau Tayac (Cuvee Tayac La Rauza), Margaux (AMC), 2003.  I opened it and found many red tiny balls on the inside surface of the cork. When I touched them, they felt like tiny sand-sized balls and they began to drop when I pushed them with my fingers.
Are they some residue of wine, evidence of rotten wine, a contaminated product of oak and wine, or whatever? I hesitated to drink it.
A. Your question is a good one, and I understand why you would be concerned about finding these hard deposits on the surface of your wine’s cork. They are crystalline deposits, completely natural and harmless. They sometimes form in wines (both red and white) that have not been completely stabilized before bottling. This is usually done by means of refrigeration and filtering just ahead of bottling.
Although these tartrates may look dangerous, especially in white wines, where they most often resemble glasslike shards rather than the sand-sized balls you describe, rest assured that they are not. They will not affect the flavor or ageability of the wine in any way, and if accidentally ingested they will cause no harm. If you wish to eliminate them, the easiest way is to decant the wine carefully, or pour it through a wire strainer.

Paul Gregutt, author of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com.

Paul Gregutt
Wine adviser

Because there are no significant vineyard plantings nearby, the wineries around Spokane share much in common with those west of the Cascades. Winemakers do a lot of driving, often making round trips of hundreds of miles several times a week, especially when harvest is under way. Once the grapes are picked, they must be trucked back to the winery for processing, a labor- and time-intensive process that adds risk (rain, sunburn, windburn, attacks by flocks of hungry starlings) as well as extra cost to the winemaking.
So it is no small achievement when excellent wines are made, and even more impressive when they are offered at prices that are highly competitive, as is the case with these new releases from Spokane boutiques Barrister Winery and Robert Karl Cellars. These wines can stand right beside many of the best in this state. Both of these wineries, though relatively new, are building track records of consistent excellence from vintage to vintage — the hallmark of the very best producers in any wine region. The only problem is that these two wineries generally fly under the media radar, and make such small quantities of wine that you may not be able to find them except by contacting the wineries directly.
Barrister is the project of two attorneys, Greg Lipsker and Michael White, who began their professional winemaking venture in 2001. Barrister makes just 2,000 cases of wine annually — a few hundred cases each of merlot, cabernet sauvignon, a couple of different syrahs and a superb cabernet franc. Although they set out initially to make red wines exclusively, they’ve bent the rules enough to allow for a little bit of Klipsun vineyard sauvignon blanc and Dionysus vineyard riesling to be added to the portfolio.
Given their limited production and very fair pricing, it’s no surprise that Barrister wines are mostly sold to mailing-list and tasting-room customers, with the rest being parceled out to a few select restaurants and wine shops. If you can’t find these wines at your local retailer, I suggest you visit the Web site www.barristerwinery.com or give the tasting room a call (509) 465-3591 to order them.
The winemaking style is, shall we say, hefty … but I mean that as a compliment. The wine that best expresses the Barrister combination of power, weight, massive fruit and sweet, toasty oak is their cabernet franc. Since its 2001 debut, this wine has won most of the acclaim and medals for the winery, and should not be missed.
The 2005 Barrister Cabernet Franc ($25) offers a ripe and succulent mix of berries and black cherries, set against firm, ripe and polished tannins. It’s muscular and spicy, but the overwhelming impression is of gorgeous fruit, finished with pretty flavors of toasted nuts.
Barrister is currently offering a pair of syrahs — a 2005 “Morrison Lane Vineyard” ($26) and a 2005 “Bacchus Vineyard” bottling ($28). The Morrison Lane vineyard is one of the best sources for Walla Walla syrah, most of which goes to K Vintners and to the estate winery. Barrister has co-fermented the syrah with 6 percent viognier, to good effect. The viognier sends palate-lifting citrus/floral scents riffing through the bouquet, while adding some high tones and polish to the mouthfeel. The syrah mixes in tart berry flavors firmly anchored upon a foundation of mineral and wet stone.
The Bacchus vineyard syrah is also a potent and punchy wine, bursting with roasted, smoky, toasted oak flavors of coffee and baking chocolate, and a firm underpinning of acid and tart berry/cherry fruit. Barrister’s 2004 Merlot ($25) is produced from vineyards on Red Mountain and elsewhere in the Columbia Valley, and includes 20 percent cabernet sauvignon in the blend. It’s a dark and chocolatey wine with a rich, roasted mouthfeel.
Robert Karl Cellars, founded in 1999 by physician Joseph Gunselman and his wife Rebecca, has gone from strength to strength with never a stumble. Vintage after vintage has been beautifully crafted, in a style quite distinctively different from Barrister. Dr. Gunselman has proven himself to be a meticulous winemaker with a talent for blending that is particularly evident in his reserve and cabernet wines.
Though labeled Columbia Valley, the grapes come from several vineyards located in the Horse Heaven Hills. The Gunselmans have recently purchased their own eight acres on Phinny Hill, near a block of vines planted for them eight years ago. Their love for that area began with their first few visits, while hunting for grape sources a decade ago. Says Joe, “to me it has a magic to it; it just hit us the first time we traveled there. We didn’t know there were a lot of vineyards already there. We just knew it was the place.”
Robert Karl wines offer exceptional quality for the price, and are styled for long-term cellaring as well as immediate enjoyment. If opened when young I recommend you plan to give the wines several hours of decanting time to unlock the aromas. The Robert Karl 2005 Syrah ($29) features fruit from the McKinley Springs vineyard. This distinctive wine offers tangy flavors of boysenberry, raspberry and tart cranberry. There are hints of meat and smoke and bacon, and the acids are clean and seem to etch the flavors into sharp relief.
The Robert Karl 2004 “Inspiration” Reserve Red ($45), just 100 cases made) is a complex Bordeaux blend of 38 percent cabernet sauvignon, 17 percent merlot, 12 percent cabernet franc, 20 percent petit verdot and 13 percent malbec. It’s a masterful effort, streaked with every conceivable red fruit, a layer of chocolate, a whiff of coffee, a lick of butterscotch and plenty of vivid acids.
Almost as good is the Robert Karl 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon ($29). It’s supple and juicy, loaded with berry flavors and blended with small amounts of the other four Bordeaux grapes. The flavors are tightly woven, showing purple fruits, butterscotch, mocha, moist earth and baking spices. These are all 91 to 94 point wines.
For purchase information call the winery at 888-4CLARET or visit www.robertkarl.com.
Pick of the week
Cermeño Tinto 2005, $11. I was opining to a bartender friend the other night that the world’s best wine values are coming from Spain, southern France and southern Italy. No sooner had I said it than this super-saturated red from Spain’s Toro region lit up my palate, as if to confirm the point. The grape is called tinta de Toro (the local name for tempranillo) and it has been made by a regional co-op called Covitoro. Intense in color, scent and flavor, this powerful red wine delivers juicy berry flavors highlighted with scents of tobacco. Vanilla and smoke waft through the extended, meaty and tannic finish. The name Cermeño refers to a type of pear grown in the region.

Paul Gregutt, author of “Washington Wines and Wineries: The Essential Guide,” can be reached at wine@paulgregutt.com