Winemaker Notes
Blend: 60% Merlot, 21% Petit Verdot, 19% Cabernet Sauvignon
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
This is really beautiful with chocolate and tile aromas and flavors. Medium to full body, round and polished tannins and a flavorful finish. Refined. Nice balance here. 60% merlot, 21% petit verdot and 19% cabernet sauvignon.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot, the 2017 Clos de Betz has a vibrant expression on the nose, with plush, generous fruit aromas and an underlying brooding tightness. Full-bodied on the palate, the fleshy, plump fruit tones deliver a velvety lushness over the mid-palate, then the wine becomes more dusty and rigid on the finish, ending with oak spices that linger. I will revisit this swine in 36 months, as I suspect it will show better at a later date. This will easily last a decade and more.
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Wine Enthusiast
Merlot makes up 60% of this wine, with the rest near equal parts Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot, with the latter the most this wine has had. Partially fermented in concrete, it has violet, flint, bay leaf, raspberry and dark berry aromas out front. The palate is broad and flavorful, showing a knee-buckling sense of balance with a finish that carries.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Moving to the Bordeaux blends from bottle, the 2017 Clos de Betz is Merlot-dominated but includes small amounts of Petit Verdot and Cabernet Sauvignon. It’s a medium to full-bodied, nicely concentrated, structured vintage for this cuvée and has terrific tobacco, smoked herbs, black cherry, and blackberry-like aromas and flavors. This cuvée is normally upfront and ready to go, but the 2017 is going to benefit from 2-3 years of bottle age. It should evolve for over a decade. Rating: 92+
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
A large and geographically diverse AVA capable of producing a wide variety of wine styles, the Columbia Valley AVA is home to 99% of Washington state’s total vineyard area. A small section of the AVA even extends into northern Oregon!
Because of its size, it is necessarily divided into several distinctive sub-AVAs, including Walla Walla Valley and Yakima Valley—which are both further split into smaller, noteworthy appellations. A region this size will of course have varied microclimates, but on the whole it experiences extreme winters and long, hot, dry summers. Frost is a common risk during winter and spring. The towering Cascade mountain range creates a rain shadow, keeping the valley relatively rain-free throughout the entire year, necessitating irrigation from the Columbia River. The lack of humidity combined with sandy soils allows for vines to be grown on their own rootstock, as phylloxera is not a serious concern.
Red wines make up the majority of production in the Columbia Valley. Cabernet Sauvignon is the dominant variety here, where it produces wines with a pleasant balance of dark fruit and herbs. Wines made from Merlot are typically supple, with sweet red fruit and sometimes a hint of chocolate or mint. Syrah tends to be savory and Old-World-leaning, with a wide range of possible fruit flavors and plenty of spice. The most planted white varieties are Chardonnay and Riesling. These range in style from citrus and green apple dominant in cooler sites, to riper, fleshier wines with stone fruit flavors coming from the warmer vineyards.