OTB #1 One Man Band – White Heron 2005 Syrah – Columbia Valley

Paul Gregutt noted in his post on Thursday that:

“Washington’s other 650 wineries each produce an average of just 137 cases of wine annually. They can price it as high as they like and sell it all to friends and family, or trade it like currency if things get really tight.”

Now this was an April Fool’s post but there is enough truth in this hyperbole that those of us who live here probably thought, “Yeah, that’s about right. Wonder how much ‘o6 Syrah Tom and Susan will trade me for a couple dozen eggs and a pound of bacon?”

At lots of these small wineries it’s not at all uncommon to meet the vineyard manager, winemaker, tasting room host, bottle line foreman, lab chemist, owner, barrel procurement agent, and distributer all at one time. That’s because those titles all fit the one (or two) people who run the whole show.

That is the case with Cameron and Phyllis Fries at White Heron in Quincy. I’ve climbed up the hill in my car to White Heron probably four or five times. I’ve never met Phyllis, but a couple of those times I found Cameron in or near the tasting room and the front door was open. Other times, the door was closed and the note on the index card said “Call (509) XXX-WINE, we’re out in the vineyard or around back and can’t hear the door bell”.

I’ve called that number a time or two, and Cameron always (eventually) shows up sporting a huge smile, a scruffy beard, size 16 shoes, and a tool in his hand. That tool might be pruning shears, a rubber mallet from pounding barrel bungs, a wine thief from some sampling, a wrench from working on the corking machine, or a tape gun from making up case boxes. He’ll put down that tool, shake your hand, and find a cork screw.

The wines from White Heron are mostly made from grapes grown within about a hundred yards of so of its tasting room on the side of a steep slope facing south toward the Columbia River and Gorge. The name of the Fries’ vineyard is Marisopa after a native wildflower, a lily, found here. At least ten different grape varietals are grown including the Bordeaux varietals (Cab Sauvignon, Merlot, Cab Franc, Malbec, Petit Verdot) grown all over Eastern Washington and a few rarities Gamay, Rousanne, and Pinot Noir. Yes, Washington does grow some Pinot Noir.

We opened a bottle of White Heron 2005 Syrah this week and had it with grilled burgers. This wine has a big fruit nose tells you CHERRY in your face. Once it opened up fully, the cherry and plum stayed on the palate (no over oaking here), and after about an hour, the peppery Syrah notes began to sing on the back end.

One day I was in White Heron and got a real kick out of some tourists who could hardly believe that wine was actually made on this very spot, where the grapes were grown, with the Columbia River shining in the distance. Cameron was a great host to these people and shared everything in his lineup. At the end, they really liked a Red Blend that wasn’t ready to be sold yet. It had just been bottled that day and didn’t have a seal or label. I’m not even sure the bottle Cameron was pouring from had ever been corked. Nonetheless, these folks wanted some, so Cameron snuck in the back and brought back a few unlabelled bottles and stuffed them into a paper bag. He made up a price on the spot, two chickens I think, and they loaded back into their truckster and went on down the road.

Don’t worry, Cameron, I won’t tell anybody you bartered wine this way.
_____________________________________

I am a collector of trivia and like learning about where I live or where I’m going to be visiting. As an adjunct to my Off the Bus Tour, at the end of each post I’m going to add a “Fun Fact” about Eastern Washington that may have nothing to do with wine.

OTB Fun Fact: The Missoula Floods, which towards end of the last Ice Age periodically covered much of Eastern Washington, are estimated to have been moving at speeds of up to forty five miles per hour and the volume of water is estimated to have been more than ten times the amount of all of the earth’s current rivers….combined. Noah, you’re gonna need a bigger boat.

Edwards conducts Elgar

Yakima Symphony Orchestra

The Capitol Theatre

509-853-ARTS

yakimasymphony.org

Platinum Wine Awards Dinner

Yakima Enological Society

Yakima Country Club

509-248-4848

yakimawine.org

Hear my Voice: Win the Vote

Yakima Valley Museum & Allied Arts

Yakima Valley Museum

509-248-0747

Cabaret

Capitol Theatre presents Broadway on the Edge

Cabaret April 13&14, 2010

www.capitoltheatre.org

Geoffrey Canada: Improving the Lives of Children, One Poor Child at a Time

Town Hall Lecture Series

The Capitol Theatre

509-966-0930

capitoltheatre.org

Pre-Barrel Tasting in the Rattlesnake Hills

4/17/2010 – 4/18/2010

Free! An annual tradition in the Rattlesnake Hills. No ticket or premier pass required.  Sixteen (16) wineries in the Rattlesnake Hills roll out the barrels for complimentary samples of soon-to-be-released and award-winning wines. Taste directly from the barrels and find out why Rattlesnake Hills wine grapes are some of the most sought after grapes in the industry. This weekend you’ll find smaller lines and time for more one-on-one with the winemakers.

Purchase a $10 Passport for great discounts on wine and/or free reserve wine tasting at all the Rattlesnake Hills Wine Trail wineries. For information, call 509-965-4521 or 888-375-RHWT or www.rattlesnakehills.com .

OTB #2 “B” is for – Cave B 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon – Columbia Valley

Ok, this is where the WBC Buster Bus breaks for brunch at Cave B on the second day of the blog busting across Washington.  To brief my buds on the Off the Bus bonanza, Barb and I made the trek up there on Sunday to sample the bodacious buffet of breads, bagels, blintz, eggs benedict, beef (prime rib), bacon, baby greens, bananas, and some foods that don’t start with B.   We celebrated Easter but is was also Barb’s birthday. I know better than to announce which one. 

The brunch was accompanied by a sparkling Mimosa made from the estate Brut.  We’re not huge fans of the bubbly, but this was quite refreshing and had nice clean bite if a few too many bits of pulp.  After the buffet, we enjoyed the Easter Baskets, bright blue plastic eggs, bonnets, and a black dog bouncing about that made for quite a bash.  My beautiful blue-eyed brunette blushing bride Barb, the birthday girl, basked on the bench next to the Cave B version of Bugs Bunny.

OTB # 3 On the Look Out – Milbrandt 2006 Sentinel Red Blend – Northridge Vineyard, Wahluke Slope

From Cave B, after gorging at the gorge at George, the WBC Busters will be herded back onto the bus for a sleepy ride down the Columbia River toward Sunnyside and DuBrul Vineyards. Depending on speed and route taken, this trip will take about an hour and a half. I’m going to spend my next dozen or so posts describing what you’re missing by staying on the bus. If you ever come back you’ll know where to stop. I’ll even include bathroom breaks as those are sometimes critical on this stretch, right honey?

 [Kay Kay] Yeah, right [/kk].

 There are actually two routes from Cave B; right at the front gate will take you back to I-90. Turn left, and after passing the Amphitheatre entrance and campground, you run into some of the first large vineyard tracts you will see in Washington State. Yes, there are vineyards around Cave B and at a couple of locations on the Wet Side of Washington, but beginning here and continuing until the Bus finally stops in Walla Walla, you’ll be in the heart of Washington wine growing country. These are where the hundred-acre-plus tracts begin for the big time growers. Many of these large vineyards don’t have wineries attached or any public access so they’re mostly unnoticed unless you know where to look.

When the bus takes the off-ramp before crossing (or entering) the Columbia, remove your fingers from the death grip on headrest in front of you and look ahead. Off to the left about 15 miles is Royal City where superstar winemaker Charles Smith found his 100-point Syrah grapes at Stoneridge Vineyard.

The driver should take a right onto Route 243 and after some ups and downs, you and the river will be approaching the Saddle Mountains. The river decided to cut straight through; so will the bus. The gap is called Sentinel Gap and the huge incline of rocks resting against the side of the mountains on each side are gravel bars left there during the Missoula Floods.

This gap is also the entry to the Wahluke Slope AVA, and in addition to the five thousand or so vineyard acres, the Wahluke is densely grown with cherries, apples, pears and other tree fruits. By the end of June, the fruit stand just past the gap on the left should be open with ripe cherries from the orchard just behind it. This is where I found the bee boxes on Sunday; they don’t have a restroom though.

Further south, you’ll rapidly pass some of Milbrandt’s Wahluke vineyards, Clifton, Clifton Hill, Katherine Leone on the left and their large production facility at Mattawa on the right. Jerry and Butch Milbrandt started converting the family’s croplands, previously primarily wheat and fruit orchards to vineyard in 1997 and at about 1600 acres currently under vine between 13 separate sites, they are one of the largest (if not THE largest) privately owned vineyard operations in the state.

What’s most interesting to me is that after ten years in the wine grape farming business, selling their crop to many of the top wineries in the state, the Milbrandts launched their own label in 2007. They are certainly not the first vineyard owners to launch their own label after being a supplier to other wineries, but the wines they’ve produced (over 25 different wines at various price points), early volume (estimated at 18,000 cases per year), and a new production facility being added at their already large Mattawa production facility (might be finished by June) tells me these guys are ones to watch over the next few years to carry another banner for Washington wines beyond the state’s borders. What positions Milbrandt well are a) its vineyards, b) its eye-catching labels and great wines at all price levels, and c) its vineyards.

How many Milbrandt grapes end up in their labeled bottles vs. (many times higher priced) wines made from Milbrandt grapes by other producers over the next 5-10 years will be interesting. Milbrandt currently supplies fruit to about sixty wineries, but that number, or at least the amount of fruit alloted to each, will certainly decrease as the Milbrandt label ramps up its production levels.  Yes, boutique wineries have some advantages and the good ones will continue to earn trust and also help build the Milbrandt brand, but at what point do the scales tip on where the best grapes from the best sites will be used to make the best (or equal) wines? When a vertically integrated grower/vintner/seller can do this at a lower cost, and sell the wines at a lower price point in the market, the pressure on the boutiques increases and ultimately I’d see Milbrandt competing alongside Hogue, Maryhill, and Barnard Griffin to be the challengers to Chateau St. Michelle, Columbia Crest, and Columbia for Washington’s (increasing) share of the global wine market.

Milbrandt’s first flagship release, called Sentinel,  I think will help test this theory. Sentinel is a Bordeaux style blend containing Cabernet Sauvingnon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec, and Petite Sirah. The grapes are all sourcesd from Milbrandt Northridge Vineyard which is located above the flood line near the base of Saddle Mountain.  We’ve sampled this wine a few times and opened a bottle rarely. Tonight we did so as a sacrifice to this blog post.  Oh and it’s our wedding anniversary, too.  The wine is a medium dark garnet.  Nose is cassis, brambleberry, vanilla, and tobacco leaf.  Palate is medium bodied with smooth tannins and a chalky finish.  We paired this with meatloaf and garlicy mashed potatoes. 

The WBC Busters may have a chance to sample Milbrandt’s wines when they get to Prosser later in the day on the 24th since the Milbrandt tasting room is located there in the Vintner’s Village. Be on the look out for them there too.

_____________________________________________________

OTB Fun Fact: The Columbia River is one of the major rivers along the Pacific Flyway and along with the Columbia National Wildlife Refuge is home to several hundred species of birds and waterfowl (some temporarily migrating). On a personal note, Barb and I met a very gracious lady one day who we shared a ride over the Pass to SeaTac when the flights from Yakima got fogged out. She and her husband had relocated to the Yakima Valley in the 1950’s because he was an avid duck hunter and he’d picked this area off of a flyway map. The ducks are still flying and he’s still shooting, so look out.

OTB # 4 The Envelope Please – Fielding Hills 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon – Wahluke Slope

For today’s Off The Bus review I’m going to talk about a wine that is an anomaly for us in that we’ve never before visited the tasting room or sampled a line-up of Fielding Hills wine. I think this may be a first for us for buying wine in Washington other than restaurant purchases, therefore I can’t write much about any personal connection to the winery. Also, the winery itself is located pretty far afield from the WBC drive–by (in East Wenatchee) so it’s a bit of stretch to cover it here. But the estate vineyard, called Riverbend, is smack in the middle of the Wahluke Slope AVA; if you look at the Wahluke on the map, the shape of the Columbia River as it forms the western and southern boundaries explains the name of the vineyard.

I’ve written about Full Pull, Paul Gregutt, and the Wine Peeps before. These are three distinct unconnected groups/people and are folks who’ve been drinking wine, particularly wine from the Pac NW, for much longer than Barb and me. Paul G. is a professional wine critic whose palate preferences I’ve come to realize are pretty close to my own. So when Paul Z. at Full Pull advertised a “yet to be announced, but highest score ever for this producer by Paul G.” wine available at $38, I jumped on the offer. I asked for more, but that’s how I ended up with an allotment of two bottles of Fielding Hills 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon through Full Pull.

One of the things that gets debated and kicked about in wine commentary daily is the value of ratings and scores. In the U.S., most wineries enter contests and submit their wines for review. Either to local or regional contests or to the large “international” contests (The San Francisco Chronicle and Dallas Morning News sponsor some of the bigger ones). There are also four or five or six national publications that publish scores, typically on a 100 point system. These medals and scores get published, debated, analyzed, and displayed prominently in wine shops and on grocery store “shelf talkers”. They’re very important is lots of ways even though some (including myself) sometimes complain about their value or meaning.

The topic of reviewer qualifications and who has adequate credentials for giving scores or providing a rating is another whole can of worms. This is particularly true in the world of social media/internet blogging and with systems such as Cellar Tracker where anybody in the world can announce what they believe is a perfect one hundred point wine or a zero.

Some wineries have decided (publicly or privately) not to submit wines for review either to critics or to competitions. These are typically ones who either don’t need to because of prior reputation or they’ve taken a calculated gamble that they can market effectively without them. Risky business in today’s wine world, if you asked me.

In addition to the Pauls’ review and recommendations, just last week Kori at Wine Peeps published their review of Taste Washington, the biggest statewide event in Washington, and this wine was given their highest ranking of any wine not named Quilceda Creek. When discussing this wine with Barb, I asked if she’d rather have four pair of really great shoes or one pair for the same price. She hesitated, but a quick look at her closet, or the floor under the bed, or the end of our sofa, or any other surface in our house will belie her true answer. Nice Birks, sweetie!

And when I looked at the Fielding Hills web site I realized the 2009 year end rankings from Wine Enthusiast magazine (which Paul G. is a contributing editor to) had ranked this wine #39 of all wines released in 2009. In the Whole World. Paul’s review had given the wine a 95 score which after I thought about it, is a notch or two higher than anything else in our cellar (that I know of), regardless of price.

These things elevate expectations and made me nervous about even opening this wine. But open it we did. Again as a sacrifice to this OTB blog tour and to celebrate our wedding anniversary. (Which is actually today, not yesterday. At least I got the month right, hunh?)

We let this wine breath for a full hour, and then started sipping. The color of this wine is a solid 100% opacity dense, purple black. On the nose it is intense concentrated fruit, blackberry and currant, with some deep violet notes. The palate is smooth but not overpowering, flavors of cassis, black cherry, dark chocolate, and licorice. On the finish is a crisp acidity, surprising bright red fruit and black pepper combined with an intense tar and granite underneath. This wine has balance and depth from start to finish without being over the top. We paired this with BBQ baby back ribs and the spicy sauce brought out the spice in the wine, or visa versa. Very nice.

I haven’t the experience or desire to give this wine an actual score, I like leaving that to others, but rest assured when a Wahluke Slope Cabernet appears on a list rated this highly, or we come across any Fielding Hills wine, we’ll try to buy four bottles instead of one or two.

____________________________________

OTB Fun Fact: East Wenatchee, along with Wenatchee and Leavenworth, are home to the Washington Special Olympics Winter Games each year. This fantastic event has over 1,500 athletes from all parts of Washington participate and was the highlight of mine and Barb’s last trip (prior to Easter) up and down the Columbia River riding in a bus. Those medals mean more than any awards at any wine competition. Ever.

Next Page »