New Releases from Washington State

Like so many winemakers in California, growers in Washington once harvested strictly on brix levels whether the grapes had achieved phenolic ripeness or not. Then they got the idea that they needed to pick their grapes with fully brown seeds in order to make great wine; and now they’re coming around to thinking that the ideal time to harvest lies somewhere between these two extremes. The result is fresher, better balanced wines that are more likely to enjoy a positive evolution in bottle.

It helps, too, that Washington has enjoyed a favorable recent string of vintages. Many of the new reds I tasted in recent months are from 2007, a vintage most producers are thrilled with. This reasonably warm and even growing season, which avoided serious heat spikes, yielded dense, complex, elegant wines with vibrancy, including many very good whites. Some producers say their 2007s combine the structure and ripeness of the 2005s with the verve of the 2006s, and that the vintage looks to be one of the great ones for Washington. Although the best ’07s I tasted in recent months have the stuffing and balance to be agers, they are often so deep, juicy and attractively fruity now that it’s hard to defer gratification. Many of these wines seem even fresher than the 2006s, and in fact numerous growers reported that these wines have lower pHs and more energy than the previous vintage.