Winemaker Notes
The 2015 harvest was the warmest vintage in recorded history, with fantastic viticulture and a great extended harvest. Because of this, they were able to make some of the most incredible wines to date. The vintage was dray and long with an early bud break and late harvest that had cool evening to guarantee incredible quality. The 2015 wines have big complex flavors, good acidity and great balance.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The flagship cuvée of this label, the 2015 Petit Verdot is all varietal and saw an extended maceration of close to 40 days and was aged in 40% new French oak. It has beautiful blue fruits, violets, sappy green herbs, and a kiss of graphite to go with a full-bodied, concentrated, seamless style on the palate. I love its purity of fruit, it has good acidity, and present yet polished tannins. Give bottles another couple of years and enjoy over the following decade.
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James Suckling
Big, round and salubrious plums and blackberries here. Soft swirling tannins that deliver plenty of energy and depth. Pleasure machine. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Offering up brooding aromas of smoky black cherries, crème de cassis and violets, the 2015 Petit Verdot Olsen Vineyard is full-bodied and powerful, with an ample core of fruit framed by rich structuring tannins, and it has a long, savory finish. While it's a very superb standalone expression of Petit Verdot, and certainly the most powerful wine in the range, I gravitated toward the two Rhône bottlings reviewed here.
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Wine Spectator
Plush and polished, showing a complex core framed by fleshy blueberry and cherry flavors, accented by licorice and spice notes that linger on the finish. Drink now through 2025.
One of the original Bordeaux varieties, Petit Verdot has a bold structure, color and aromas, which allow it to make a significant difference in Bordeaux Blends—even in modest amounts. While it isn’t planted in Bordeaux in great quantities anymore, its virtues are increasingly identified elsewhere. Somm Secret—Producing phenomenal single-varietal wines in hot and dry locations in the New World, Petit Verdot also finds a happy home in parts of Spain as well as in in Portugal’s Alentejo where it gracefully blends with the regions' indigenous varieties.
As the first recognized wine-growing region in the Pacific Northwest, Yakima Valley is centrally located within Washington’s vast Columbia Valley. The region also includes Washington’s oldest Cabernet Sauvignon vines, Otis Vineyard, planted in 1957, and Harrison Hill Vineyard, planted in 1963. Yakima Valley contains three smaller sub-regions: Rattlesnake Hills, Red Mountain, and Snipes Mountain and is ideal for both red and white wine production. In fact, Yakima Valley is Washington’s most diverse region, boasting more than 40 different grape varieties over about one hundred miles.
The cooler parts of the valley are home to almost half of the Chardonnay and Riesling produced in the state! Both are made in a wide range of styles depending on the conditions of the vineyard site.
But its warmer locations yield a large proportion of Washington’s best Merlot, Syrah and Cabernet Sauvignon. The finest Yakima Valley reds are jam-packed full of red cherry, currant, raspberry or blackberry fruit, as well as cocoa, herb, spice and savory notes, and exhibit a supple texture, great body, focus and length.