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Cadaretta

I retasted a number of Cadaretta wines during the summer with winemaker Kendall Mix in Walla Walla, then several new releases chez moi in September. In the interim, Mix left Cadaretta to take over winemaking at Milbrandt Family Wines and Cadaretta hired the talented Peter Devison from EFESTÉ.

Mix was quite positive on Washington’s 2016 vintage. “Initially it looked like the earliest year ever but the second half of the summer was more moderate,” he told me, and the harvest lasted until October 25 for the estate’s Southwind Cabernet Sauvignon (but the Red Mountain Cabernet was picked on September 8). Cadaretta cropped its Sauvignon Blanc heavier in order to get more hang time, then thinned the fruit in mid-August when it became clear that ripening wouldn’t be as rapid as it had been in the last few years. Mix added that 2016 was also the best year in a while for Cadaretta’s Southwind Merlot.

The Middleton family’s large Southwind vineyard just west of Milton-Freewater in Walla Walla Valley, not far from Seven Hills and Ferguson vineyards, covers 350 acres (about 250 are plantable), of which 78 have been planted to Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Syrah. Mourvedre and Grenache vines will be the next to go in. Much of the property is planted on heat-retaining fractured basalt soil at 900 to as high as 1,431 feet (the maximum height reached by the Missoula floods that originally carved out the Columbia River basin was about 1,250 feet). With barely two feet of topsoil over basalt bedrock, these mostly southwest-facing soils dry out quickly. Southwind also features deeper soils on north-facing slopes, which have less need for irrigation.

From Washington: Various Shades of Hot (Oct 2017) by Stephen Tanzer

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2016 Sauvignon Blanc/Sémillon SBS

Release Price: $23

Color: White

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