Checking In On The Wine

A couple weeks ago we decided to go check in on our "children;" i.e., the grapes we sold last year to Beaumont Cellars in Quincy + Woodinville and to Camas Cove Cellars here in Moses Lake. They grow up so fast.

It's pretty thrilling to taste the fruits of your labor. It's only been wine for nine months now, but at this stage one can tell whether it's going to be successful or not.

Dennis & Nancy at Camas Cove had both our Cab Franc and our Chardonnay. The Chard had been aging sur lie (sediment unremoved). Neither had yet been exposed to new oak.

We sampled the Cab Franc first. What a moment. The color was unexpected, more plum than red, almost like a malbec. Expectations were relatively low, given the youth of the wine. But my goodness! Lots of fruit, lovely strains of blackberry/cassis all the way through, with that classic tobacco & leather Cab Franc finish. It was young, yes, but already better than most year-old releases I've had.

I kept my opinions to myself and watched the host. "Damn! That's really good," says Dennis, swirling and quaffing and shaking his head. "That's really good!" Triumph.

Next the Chard. For some reason I had expected it to be minerally & flinty, reflective of our lean rocky soil. Instead it was decidedly tropical, all pineapple & melon. A full-bodied mouthfeel. Which makes sense, because it was picked at around 25.5 brix. It's going to be magnificent as well, though Dennis is going to use most of it to blend with his Rousanne to make the famous Thelma & Louise. He's going to put the rest on a little light oak to enhance the flavors.

The next weekend we dropped in on Pete at Beaumont Cellars at the end of a tasting day and relaxed with him for an hour sampling wine and talking farming. He brought out some of our Cab Franc and dropped a tiny oak chip in it. By now my expectations were too high, or my palate more realistic. It was plenty good, but now I noticed the newness of the wine much more than I had at Camas Cove. (Both lots of Cab Franc were picked the same day, at the same numbers - 25 brix, .49% TA, 3.4 pH.)

Again I kept my mouth shut and asked Pete what he thought. He mentioned how important the tobacco finish was to a Cab Franc, and that this had it. "I can definitely work with this," he said, which for the taciturn Pete Beaumont I'll take as high praise indeed.

Pete's wines have been getting a lot of recognition at competitions around the Northwest. "Take care of those grapes!" he called to me as we were leaving.

"Win me a gold medal," I hollered back.