Professional Ratings

• 96 Jeb Dunnuck

  I was also able to taste a bottle of the 2011 Cabernet Sauvignon Columbia Valley, which comes from a more challenging, cool year. It has a solid perfume of ripe red and black fruits, truffly earth, graphite, and tobacco. With medium to full-bodied richness and beautifully resolved tannins.

• 95 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

  The 2011 Cabernet Sauvignon is the first of the 20-year vertical to show soft herbal notes with sage and bay leaf elements, as the fruit condition begins to shift from lively and youthful fruit tones to more mature tones of dried black and dark red fruit in the glass. Medium to full-bodied, the wine is beginning to go through the change with still-firm tannin's and a juicy, ripe essence of fruit. The 2011 is an outlier of sorts, since, in this vintage, Quilceda Creek suffered a major loss to many of its Cabernet blocks at Champoux Vineyard, forcing them to seek out and outsource other fruit in 2011. Luckily the Wallula Vineyard had quality Cabernet to offer, and the rest is history.

• 93 Wine Spectator
  Firm in texture, with a layer of drying tannins around a brilliantly focused core of blackberry and currant, coming together on the finish and persisting well. Has the goods to age. Best from 2016 through 2021. 2,250 cases made.