2016 Red Wine Palengat

I tasted Quilceda Creek’s superb set of 2016s with assistant winemaker Alex Stewart, who described ’16 as a gorgeous vintage. “It cooled down at the end, and we could let the fruit hang and marinate,” he said, adding that the harvest extended from September 21 to November 11. Stewart told me that the '16s fermented relatively cool, with maximum temperatures in the mid to high 80s. Alcohol levels in the finished wines are around 15%, he added, but the winery simply indicated 15.2% on the labels. The pHs in ’16 range between 3.86 and 3.97, or about average for the Quilceda Creek wines. The '16s were bottled in June of 2018 but all but the CVR Red Wine, which is made from declassified barrels, were released this year. Quilceda Creek's production is now up to about 15,000 cases per year, but at least 40% of this total is their CVR "second wine."