New Releases from Washington State

The more I taste the better 2011 red wines from Washington State,
the more excited I become about this vintage—and the more I wonder whether the
warmest areas within the Columbia Valley’s high desert are just too hot in some
years to make elegant, naturally balanced wines.&nbsp; Of course, the same statement can be made
about any hot, dry region where the challenge is to get adequate ripeness of
the grape skins before sugar levels skyrocket, grapes begin to dehydrate and
natural acidity levels plunge. 

Certainly, Washington’s growers and winemakers have gained an
extraordinary amount of experience in recent years, as the last five growing
seasons have presented an improbably wide range of temperature conditions: 

2010:&nbsp; Cool 

2011:&nbsp; Very cool (downright
cold by Washington standards)

2012:&nbsp; Perfectly average,
classic

2013:&nbsp; Very warm

2014:&nbsp; Seriously hot (record total degree days)

Thanks to the superb trio of vintages in 2010, 2011 and 2012, there
are more outstanding Washington wines available in the retail marketplace, or
on the way, than ever before.&nbsp; It gets
better: &nbsp;there are also more excellent choices
than ever in the $20 to $40 range.&nbsp; These
bottlings are now beating the pants off most California wines at the same price
for value and drinkability.

A closer look at 2011.&nbsp; As a vintage, 2011 is less consistent than
2010, as it was a freakishly cool year and grapes in some sites did not reach
sufficient ripeness.&nbsp; Clearly, many wine
lovers weaned on West Coast wines prefer more flesh and power in their red
wines and are less accepting of cooler aromas and flavors than your Europhile
correspondent is.&nbsp; But cleverly managed
vineyards produced fruit in 2011 with excellent phenolic ripeness at
lower-than-normal sugar levels.&nbsp; The
successful wines from this vintage display fresh, perfumed aromas and complex,
well-delineated flavors; fine-grained texture and noteworthy inner-mouth
energy; and harmonious, smooth tannins.&nbsp; Wines
from single sites also generally communicate their terroir character far more clearly in 2011 than do wines from much
riper years featuring a percentage of dehydrated grapes and considerably higher
alcohol levels.

The 2011s also appear to have the natural acidity and overall
balance to support graceful evolution in bottle.&nbsp; I have rarely found this combination of
characteristics from past vintages in Washington.&nbsp; And it’s not just the elite producers who
have excelled:&nbsp; in 2011, many wineries
that have consistently made rather chunky red wines without much nuance or
refinement have crafted much classier bottles.

Some growers reported a lighter-than-usual fruit set in 2011, while
others said the flowering presaged a normal crop, but all agreed that work in
the vineyards was necessary to get their fruit ripe in the abnormally cool
conditions of 2011.&nbsp; “Yields had to be
cut significantly to ensure proper ripening of the grapes,” said Billo Naravane
of Rasa Vineyards.&nbsp; Naravane maintained
that crop loads in cool years like 2010 and 2011 really must be kept to no more
than two tons per acre to ensure optimal fruit quality.

According to Gilles Nicault, who directs
winemaking for Long Shadows Vintners, “we were more aggressive right away in 2011 with thinning the
crop and opening up the canopy early because we had benefited from our
experience in 2010.”&nbsp; As in 2010,
Washington enjoyed very good weather late in the growing season of 2011, and
the added hang time (in the case of Long Shadows, well into November, said
Nicault) allowed a moderate load of grapes to ripen slowly and brought greater
concentration, color and complexity. &nbsp;And
not only did Washington have the advantage of a long,
leisurely maturation process but it did not have to deal with the often destructive
harvest-time rains that plagued California’s North Coast.

Bob Betz, winemaker/patriarch at Betz Family Winery, told me that
the temperature on September 1 of 2011 was higher than on June 1, July 1 and
August 1.&nbsp; The end-of-season heat
accumulation in 2011 salvaged the vintage, he added, and yielded wines with
uncommon purity and expressiveness.&nbsp; And
of course, normally very warm areas, such as the Red Mountain AVA in Yakima
Valley, were at an advantage in the very cool 2011 growing season.

&nbsp;<img alt="" src="https://allgrapes.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads%2F1417552406810-Benches_vineyard+vinous.jpg">The Benches Vineyard in the Horse Heaven Hills AVA.&nbsp;Courtesy of Andréa Johnson Photography The platonic growing season
of 2012.&nbsp; Two
thousand twelve brought a return to more typical Washington warmth but,
happily, it was a year without extremes.&nbsp;
By most accounts, it was a perfectly average growing season with favorable
harvest-time weather.&nbsp; And it is turning
out to be a splendid year for white wines as well as reds.&nbsp; The successful wines of 2012—and there will
likely be more of these than in any past vintage in Washington—show a charming
balance of expressive, fresh aromas; fairly fleshy texture and noteworthy
sweetness of fruit; and ripe tannins.&nbsp;
The top reds, many of which I have not yet tasted in finished form,
should give considerable early pleasure yet age well, although the more taut,
wound-up 2011s may turn out to be the real long-distance runners.&nbsp; Time will tell.

“We enjoyed beautiful, even sunshine throughout the season,” said
Naravane of 2012.&nbsp; “The fruit set was on the lighter side given the cooler climate in
2011, and not much thinning was required this year.&nbsp; The near-perfect growing conditions made
vineyard management easy in 2012.”&nbsp; My
early take on this vintage is that producers who did not succeed in ’12 should
be in another line of work.

An early look at 2013 (and
2014).&nbsp;
According to Betz, crop
levels were potentially higher in both ’13 and ’14, “mostly due to 2012’s sun
and warmth but also due to milder winters with little or no bud damage.”&nbsp; Unlike in 2011 and 2010, when Betz
relentlessly dropped fruit to adjust for the cooler temperatures, in 2013 and
especially 2014 he let a little more fruit hang “so that we could avoid
harvesting big reds in August.”&nbsp; Still,
he added, 2014 brought the earliest start to the harvest in 18 years, beginning
on September 3.

“The heat in
August of 2013 was oppressive,” noted Ben Smith of Cadence Winery, “but
September cooled down enough to allow for a better balance of sugars and flavor
development by the end of the ripening process.&nbsp;
Two thousand fourteen was an even warmer year on Red Mountain in terms
of total degree days, added Smith, but it was consistently hot while mostly
avoiding the 100+-degree heat spikes of 2013.

“The major issue in 2013 and 2014 was how to cope with an
abundance of sunshine,” said Naravane.&nbsp; “Sunburn
was a major issue, particularly in August of both years.&nbsp; It was best to leave a higher leaf level on
the western side of the vines to provide shade for the fruit. &nbsp;The fruit set was above average in both years,
and both seasons allowed a slightly larger crop to ripen to
perfection—assuming, of course, that steps were taken to delay ripening so that
flavor development could occur before Brix levels skyrocketed.”

As is always
the case in Washington, some growers no doubt jumped the gun in 2013 and
2014 and harvested before tannins were mature, as they were unnerved by high
sugar levels in the grapes.&nbsp; And then
there were those who had not booked picking crews and trucks sufficiently in
advance and then, in the mad rush to harvest, were forced to wait much too long
to bring in their grapes.

While I haven’t tasted more than a handful of 2013 reds yet, the
white wines that I’ve tried do not generally possess the clarity or verve of
the 2012s, not to mention the cooler 2011s and 2010s.&nbsp; I should note, however, that Gilles Nicault
told me that this vintage brought white wines with good physiological maturity
at reasonable sugar levels because mid-September was actually quite cool.&nbsp; And of course vineyards planted at higher
altitude or in sites open to breezes off the Columbia River were generally more
likely to excel in 2013 and 2014.

The following wines were tasted in Washington in July and in New
York from late September through the beginning of November.

--Stephen Tanzer

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