Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2005 Old Vines is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from the Champoux Vineyard (the principal source of the Quilceda Creek Cabernet). It was aged for 20 months in 100% new French oak. Opaque purple, it offers up aromas of pain grille, pencil lead, violets, vanilla, black currant, and blackberry liqueur. This leads to a wine with serious depth and concentration, sweet, savory fruit, incipient complexity, and a very long, pure finish. Give it 5-6 years in the cellar and drink it through 2030. I tasted a 1983 Old Vines on this tasting trip and it was in impeccable condition, at its peak but with another decade of life.
Washington produces so many exciting wines, and that definitely includes Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. With over 10,000 acres under vine, Cabernet Sauvignon is now the most widely-grown varietal in the state. Terrific examples hail from sub-appellations like Red Mountain, Wahluke Slope, Horse Heaven Hills and Walla Walla Valley. One of the fascinations of these Columbia Valley Cabs is that they so often seem to have one foot in the New World and one in the Old. Representing the former are characteristics like the ripe, forward fruit that results from long sunny days during the growing season (up to two hours longer than in much of California). Old World similarities include an undeniable brightness from acidity, as well as notes of herbs, graphite and a dusty, sometimes gravelly minerality.
Whether you’re looking for a budget bottle for everyday enjoyment, or a stellar, world-class wine with tremendous aging potential, Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon wines can deliver the goods! Among the many fine options are bottles from Columbia Crest, Chateau Ste. Michelle, L’ecole #41, Quilceda Creek and Leonetti.