I’ve known Doug Frost for a long time and when this covid stuff is over I look forward to visiting him at their winery.
I like my reds to be under 14 as well but this is not easy without picking up a lot of green flavors --great if you like traditional cab franc from the Loire–and loads of tannin.
That’s the thing with WA, and Walla Walla specifically. The slower development we get here due to to the cooler nights means that we can typically reach physical ripeness at lower potential alcohols (if we want to) and I’ve had no problem making 13% alc. Cab without significant pyrazines. Even in cooler vintages like 2011, it was rare for me to find a producer here that couldn’t avoid the green notes. Avoiding the crusher and proper fermentation management can moderate the tannin as well (which can definitely be an issue here). I’ve had Doug’s Bordeaux blend from Seven Hills Vineyard, which is a great example of this.
Oops. Repeat post. Deleted.
Matt,
I visited a winery maybe twelve years ago that decided to pick Sonoma cab at around 12% potential alcohol…talk about tannic!
My next visit they had decided to pick at around 13,5…much more success in the tasting room.
Jared and Mark - agree 100% re: Travis. LOVE his wines and an even better guy
If you are purely considering mass commercial appeal, riper is no doubt generally more popular.
+2 - perhaps due to small production, name/brand recognition is not quite there yet, but wonderful wines and certainly on the path for redefining Washington Wine.
His Marsanne is ridiculously good. Great to see somebody making white rhone-style wines in WA at such a high bar (not to mention his reds).
+2 - perhaps due to small production, name/brand recognition is not quite there yet, but wonderful wines and certainly on the path for redefining Washington Wine.
Matt,
At the same time this winery was making 11,5 cab we at Uvaggio were making 11,5 Vermentino…a lot more palatable. This was when wine writers were bitch slapping everyone over high alcohol wines. We sold 200 cs of this to a store in SF under a private label. I loved the wine…but I think these people needed five years to move the wine, so I have no idea how long it took to sell a wine that combined high acid and high tannin.
Devium has a free shipping special this month on a couple 6-pack samplers so I went ahead and pulled the trigger on one of those as a start to working through giving all these wineries a try.