2017 Merlot Estate

Winemaker Kevin Mott was not quite as positive as some of his colleagues about the effects of the smoke cover on the ripening of the fruit in 2017. “The smoke threw the vines into a holding pattern,” he told me this summer, “and the ripening didn’t rebound as quickly as we would have expected after the smoke cleared.” Mott also told me that he prefers 2016 to 2015 “because the sugars came up too fast in 2015, so the grapes never really developed full fruit ripeness and the phenolics and tannins were edgier.” As a result, he added, he gave his reds a longer élevage in 2015. I should note that Woodward Canyon's estate vineyard at the winery in Lowden, about 12 miles due west of the town of Walla Walla, is very warm during the growing season (and typically picked very early) but quite cold in the winter and vulnerable to damaging frost.

When I mentioned to Mott that I found Woodward Canyon’s top two 2016 reds quite tight and edgy, as has often been the case with previous Woodward Canyon red wines in their extreme youth, he noted that the cooler vintages here, like 1989 and 1993, showed much better with extended bottle aging. “The ‘99s are still bright purple-red in color and very fruity,” he said. “The wines do expand and mellow with time. But the ripest years get a bit liqueur-like and soft. Our challenge is to get the grapes past their pyrazine greenness so that they can last and expand in bottle. But we still face the challenge of the sugars going through the roof before the grapes lose their pyrazine character.”