2016 Red Wine Blend Corrida

My extra visit to Washington this summer, where I served as honorary chairman of the Wine Auction of Washington, held at Chateau Ste. Michelle in mid-August, gave me a chance to taste Brian Carter’s current line-up of wines at his winery just down the street. Carter, a veteran winemaker who arrived in Washington in 1980, made his first wines under his epoinymous label in 1997. His aim, he told me, is to make “food-friendly, balanced, Euro-style wines that avoid huge alcohol.” Nowadays, he bottles between 6,000 and 7,000 cases of wine annually, including those offered under his second label, Array. Carter described his 2018 reds as “a bit bigger than usual in terms of their tannic structure,” but noted that, for white wines, the 2017s were “more fruit-forward” as there were fewer temperatures extremes during the growing season. He also told me that 2015 is not his favorite vintage. He finds that his wines are developing fairly quickly and does not think they will be long-lived.