Winemaker Notes
This beautiful and dark red-purple wine shows a complex nose of spiced black fruits, herbs, and lead pencil, that integrate beautifully with the subtle attractive oak. In the mouth, the wine is rich and elegant, showing ripe fruit, nice balance, and proportion, with herbs, and tobacco. Integrated tannins enhance the texture; the finish is complex, generous, and long. While this wine can be enjoyed now it will benefit greatly from additional cellaring and, with proper storage, should develop for ten years or more.
80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot, 7% Petit Verdot, 3% Syrah
Critical Acclaim
All VintagesThe 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Artist Series is a gem and well worth seeking out. Based on 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Merlot, and the rest Petit Verdot and Syrah, brought up in 28% new oak, it offers an outstanding nose of blackcurrants, toasted spice, chocolate, and bouquet garni. Concentrated, firm and structured, with medium to full-bodied richness, it’s another age-worthy wine in the lineup that needs to be forgotten for 3-5 years. Rating : 94+
A fragrant nose of blackcurrants, pine, rosemary, incense and sandalwood. It’s medium-to full-bodied with firm, fine-grained tannins. Structured and polished with a fresh finish. Drink from 2022.
This wine isn't ready to reveal itself right now, with locked up aromas of chocolate, cocoa, cherry and spice. Coffee and cherry flavors follow. Give it some additional time in the cellar to blossom.
The winery has consistently produced premium, age-worthy, award-winning Cabernet Sauvignons and Merlots as well as Chardonnays. From the outset, Rick determined that quality would take precedence over quantity.
Consequently, Woodward Canyon has remained small. Woodward Canyon is located in Lowden in the Walla Walla Valley appellation. The tasting room is a restored 1870's farmhouse.
Woodward Canyon is a founding member of the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance and VINEA, the Walla Walla Valley Winegrowers' Sustainable Trust.
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.
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.