Winemaker Notes
The 2021 Four Flags showcases the best qualities of their beloved Red Mountain AVA, in a warm vintage with beautiful richness and a silky firm structure. Red currants, graphite, fresh blackberry, and black tea leaf sing from the glass. The palate has incredible texture and liveliness, with flavors of dark chocolate, fresh truffle, and star anise. The assortment of baking spice aromas, from the 78% of new French oak, add a layer of spice and complexity that lifts this wine to another level. Enjoy over several hours if drinking young or hold for several years to experience the new heights this wine will travel to.
Pair this wine with beef short ribs, venison cheeks, lamb shanks, burgers, or earthy vegetables. Tannin levels are high in this Cabernet Sauvignon, a trait typical of Red Mountain wine, pairing particularly well with nutty cheeses and oily fats.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Coming from four different sites on Red Mountain, the 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Four Flags is brilliant, if not a true superstar wine in the making. Classic Red Mountain minerality as well as gravelly earth, dried tobacco, and savory red and black fruits define the aromatics, and it’s medium to full-bodied, with terrific concentration, ripe tannins, and a great, great finish. It should be up there with the crème de la crème of the vintage.
Barrel Sample: 94097 -
James Suckling
A blend from their four favorite Red Mountain sites, this sleek and polished wine shows an elegant side, with deep blackcurrants, black cherries and hints of dark chocolate wrapped in velvety tannins. Drinkable now; best from 2027.
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Wine Spectator
Generous and elegantly polished, with rich blackberry, mocha espresso and black olive flavors that build a fleshy texture on the long finish.
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Vinous
Musky blackcurrants combine with mint, gravel dust and a dusting of violet candy as the radiant 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Four Flags emerges from the glass. It floods the palate with silken textures and polished red and black fruits, elevated by a core of racy acidity. Dark chocolate and blood orange tones amass toward the close. A web of fine-grained tannins adds a lovely framework as the 2021 finishes. Rating: 93+
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Wine Enthusiast
They should call this wine “Six Flags,” because it contains an amusement park’s worth of flavor. The roller coaster ride begins with aromas of dark plums, fresh-grated ginger and worn leather. The wine’s black cherry and apricot fruit flavors then mix it up with tobacco and a log flume’s worth of oak
A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
A coveted source of top quality red grapes among premier Washington producers, the Red Mountain AVA is actually the smallest appellation in the state. As its name might suggest, it is actually neither a mountain nor is it composed of red earth. Instead the appellation is an anticline of the Yakima fold belt, a series of geologic folds that define a number of viticultural regions in the surrounding area. It is on the eastern edge of Yakima Valley with slopes facing southwest towards the Yakima River, ideal for the ripening of grapes. The area’s springtime proliferation of cheatgrass, which has a reddish color, actually gives the area the name, "Red" Mountain.
Red Mountain produces some of the most mineral-driven, tannic and age-worthy red wines of Washington and there are a few reasons for this. It is just about the hottest appellation with normal growing season temperatures commonly reaching above 90F. The soil is particularly poor in nutrients and has a high pH, which results in significantly smaller berry sizes compared to varietal norms. The low juice to skin ratio in smaller berries combined with the strong, dry summer winds, leads to higher tannin levels in Red Mountain grapes.
The most common red grape varieties here are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Syrah, among others. Limited white varieties are grown, namely Sauvignon blanc.
The reds of the area tend to express dark black and blue fruit, deep concentration, complex textures, high levels of tannins and as previously noted, have good aging capabilities.