Winemaker Notes
-Connoisseurs' Guide
Pink is hot! Our Dry Rose was a big hit when we offered it exclusively to our Vintage Reserve Club members last year. Based on their feedback, we decided to release it nationally with this 2006 vintage. The name, Nellie's Garden, honors Nellie Stimson whose passion for gardening created the beautiful estate gardens at our Chateau in Woodinville. The wine is a special collaboration between our red winemaking team at Canoe Ridge Estate in eastern Washington and the white winemaking team at our Woodinville Chateau, located outside of Seattle. We receive the red fruit at Canoe Ridge Estate where Joshua Maloney, our red winemaker, gives it just enough skin contact for the perfect color. Then he drains the juice off the skins and turns it over to Brennon Leighton, our white winemaker, who then cold ferments most of the juice to keep all those fresh fruit and floral aromas. What a team effort and what a wonderfully refreshing dry rose! It shows beautiful fruit aromas and flavors of strawberry, cherry, raspberry with subtle spice notes. Enjoy this during your spring and summer parties and BBQ's. It's the perfect "deck" wine... versatile and fun!
Professional Ratings
Whether it’s playful and fun or savory and serious, most rosé today is not your grandmother’s White Zinfandel, though that category remains strong. Pink wine has recently become quite trendy, and this time around it’s commonly quite dry. Since the pigment in red wines comes from keeping fermenting juice in contact with the grape skins for an extended period, it follows that a pink wine can be made using just a brief period of skin contact—usually just a couple of days. The resulting color depends on grape variety and winemaking style, ranging from pale salmon to deep magenta.
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.