New Releases from Washington: A Bonanza for Consumers

BY STEPHEN TANZER | DECEMBER 03, 2019

My annual coverage of the best new releases from Washington focuses mostly on the 2016, 2017 and 2018 vintages (mostly white wines from the latter, as very few serious reds have yet been bottled, much less released), three growing seasons that provided the conditions for making outstanding wines. Each vintage has its partisans but most of the state’s producers agree that all three benefited significantly from favorable harvest conditions. What with the ongoing trend toward planting vines in cooler microclimates, better work in the vineyards to protect the fruit from raisining, earlier harvesting for better acid retention and bumper crops in 2016 and 2018, the market is awash with splendid examples. Pressures on pricing are only making Washington’s wines more exciting to wine lovers.

While I could devote many paragraphs to explaining the differences between the 2016 and 2017 growing seasons for red varieties—and I will do that below—the bottom line is that both vintages yielded terrific wines. And numerous winemakers and winery owners I’ve tasted and talked with in recent months have described 2018 as a near-perfect vintage, even if some have noted that this growing season presented challenges for some white varieties. All three years provided late-season cool-downs that were conducive for making the kind of fresh, delineated wines that are virtually impossible in seriously hot years, the most recent of which was 2015, the hottest on record for the state’s main wine-producing areas.

Yes, 2016, 2017 and 2018 were all warm by long-term standards, but, with very few exceptions, it wasn’t the kind of heat that overwhelmed intelligent growers and winemakers. On the contrary: I was very pleasantly surprised by how few seriously cooked red wines I found during my tastings in recent months.

Pepper Bridge vineyard, with the Blue Mountains in the background

Christophe Baron's very steep Hors Categorie vineyard, on fractured basalt soil in the foothills of the Blue Mountains

2016: A Long, Relaxed Harvest

I described the 2016 growing season in some depth last year, but it was only over the past several months that I tasted a majority of the vintage’s elite bottlings in finished form. So a brief update would appear to be appropriate. The season started very warm and very early, leading growers and winemakers to fear that the vintage would be an even hotter one than 2015. Some growers reported budbreak in March, which is extremely unusual. April was freakishly warm and May continued warmer than average. The flowering in most cases took place even earlier than it had the previous year. The mild winter and very warm early spring and summer set the stage for a large crop, and the fruitfulness of the buds was also augmented by the very good weather conditions during the flowering in 2015. Many growers intentionally left more fruit—and more canopy—on their vines in an attempt to slow down the ripening process so that they could avoid another August harvest.

But then temperatures cooled down after the first week of June and remained more or less normal through the rest of the summer, except for a couple of hot spells in late June and late July. Much of July witnessed more cloud cover than usual for eastern Washington—hence minimal vine stress and risk of sunburn—and nights were pleasantly cool. Growers who had dreaded another freakishly early start to the harvest similarly felt less stressed. But the berries and grape clusters were large in 2016, and as temperatures cooled down in mid-summer, the most conscientious growers began making passes through their vines to limit their eventual crop levels.

Many growers anticipated a fast and furious start to the harvest, but although it began early, moderate temperatures through September and early October allowed growers to take their time picking. In fact, a number of producers told me that the near-ideal September weather was critical to ripening the year’s full load of grapes, especially following the cooler conditions in July and August. Numerous growers described 2016 as their longest harvest on record; some said they picked from mid-August through mid-November, when the first important frost occurred. While a few growers—mostly, I suspect, those whose vines still carried too much crop—admitted that they had trouble ripening some of their fruit, most could let their red grapes hang until they showed little or no unwanted pyrazine character. The slow ripening of the fruit contributed to the generally sound balance of the grapes—a near-ideal combination of ripe fruit character, lively acidity and plenty of ripe tannins for structural support—as well as to the density and frequently seamless texture of the resulting wines. One potential fly in the ointment in 2016, at least in Walla Walla, was some unusually early autumn rainfall, which began on October 6 and continued, on and off, through the month. Some of the later-ripening grapes, such as Cabernet Sauvignon, were still on the vines, and had to be picked carefully around the rainy spells. Rain also posed a challenge in central Yakima and on the Royal Slope, the latter a later-ripening area owing to its generally higher elevation.

Thanks to the balance of the wines and their ripeness, relatively few 2016s are overly austere in the early going. The Cabernets have plenty of tannins but they are normally fine and round, and the wines would appear to be quite ageworthy. The 2016s are often opulent and elegant at the same time, and more than one winemaker noted that the larger-than-normal cluster and berry size made it easy to extract harmonious wines. Although producers consider 2016 a warm year, it was a relief after the record heat of 2015.