Otis Kenyon 2005 Merlot

It’s been high time for me to take a break from the steady progression of red blends, so I decided to open a bottle of Otis Kenyon’s newly released merlot.

Great wine. It is everything a merlot should be. It has nice fruit to it – cherry and currant (which I guess is kind of like saying it tastes like grape – go figure). The fruit’s balanced with just the right amount of bitterness. The tannins are a little rough, but not overwhelming. The finish has overtones of oak, pencil shavings and a licorice or anise finish.

This is a really well put together wine. Thanks to the movie “Sideways,” there’s sort of a stigma to liking merlot, but the reality is that it’s an excellent grape with plenty of nuance to it, when it’s put in the right hands. Otis Kenyon has done a great job of capturing a lot of its potential in this wine.

Maryhill 2004 Proprietor’s Reserve Serendipity

I’m starting to re-think my plan of continuing my recent theme of blended red wines, because everything is suffering in comparison to the Nicholas Cole GraEagle.

I really liked the Matchless Red when I tried it on its own back in October, but tasting it after drinking the Nicholas Cole made me a much harsher critic of it than I would have been a month ago (and really than I should be now). The latest victim is the Maryhill 2004 Proprietor’s Reserve Serendipity, a blend of 30% merlot, 29% cab sauv, 29% malbec and 12% cab franc.

The most interesting thing about this wine is that it forced me to take back what I said before about malbec not standing on its own in a blend. The malbec dominates this wine from start to finish.

When I first tried a malbec, I was taken aback by the nose, which was meaty and stewy. I didn’t expect to like the wine, but was pleasantly surprised by the subtle flavors. It’s been a few months since I had that bottle (courtesy of a Terra Blanca wine club shipment), so I don’t remember precisely what it tasted like, but I remember really enjoying it and expecting to see malbec catch on the same way syrah did a few years back as the new “it” varietal.

The Serendipity has the same nose as that bottle of malbec, but what surprised me was that it tasted more or less like it smelled. It’s got a slightly rasiny quality about it that dissolves into something like wet leather. I’d almost compare it to a bret wine, but the effect isn’t that severe. The finish has a lingering chalky flavor to it, which again I associate with how it was pressed.

It’s a really good wine, but like the Matchless Red, it can’t stand up next to the GraEagle. The Serendipity is a much earthier wine. The fruit that you’d expect from the merlot never materializes. The cab franc fails to impart the peppery flavor you’d expect, and the cab sauv - it seems like its normal tobacco overtones just wind up accentuating the malbec, which is what takes center stage. This is the type of wine that would appeal to somebody who likes a wine with a hint of barnyard and leather.

If I had it to do over again, I would have drunk this wine first, then proceeded to the Matchless Red and then had the GraEagle. That would have made the positive qualities of each stand out and complement the previous wine, a progression from earthier to fruitier, from less subtle to more.

As is, it’s like the March Madness of wine, and the GraEagle is mowing down every opponent in its bracket. I might have to switch to a varietal after this.

Otis Kenyon 2005 Matchless Red

I had this great idea of contrasting the Otis Kenyon Matchless Red with the Nicholas Cole GraEagle I wrote about in my last post. They’re both red blends. They’re both roughly the same price. But after that, I’m not sure it’s fair to put them in the same category.

Otis Kenyon is a brand-new winery south of town in Walla Walla. Otis Kenyon is named after a relative of the winery owners, but the story behind the relative is not your usual run-of-the-mill “I named my wine after my grandfather” tale. Read it here.

Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly what grapes went into the Matchless Red. It’s probably your usual suspects – a lot of cab sauv, some merlot, etc.; but I just don’t know. The Otis Kenyon website doesn’t detail the varietals. Neither does the bottle. That’s kind of odd.

I thought I rememberd the wine as being fairly chalky and smoky from the first time I drank it. I was going to compare that to the way the GraEagle brings out the flavor of the fruit. After a second tasting, I don’t know if that’s entirely fair to the Matchless Red. It has plenty of fruit flavor, mostly plum, though it’s still somewhat understated versus the flavors of the GraEagle. It does have a chalky quality to it after the initial, subtle fruit. There’s a slightly smoky hint to its finish, which is otherwise fairly acidic.

From time to time, I like a wine that’s a little over-produced – tannins a little rough, a little too much time in dark-toasted oak. It’s easy to connect those flavors to the soil or to the barrel. People sometimes like to think that wines from Red Mountain taste like the volcanic soil the grapes grow in, and I tend to think it’s more because of how the wine is treated than where the fruit is grown. In the case of Otis Kenyon, its vineyards are in rocky alluvial soil, and it’s easy to make the leap from the chalky flavor to the big rough stones that are uprooted when the vineyard rows are dug.

At our local wine shop, the Matchless Red retails for $26; the GraEagle, for $27. Forced to choose, I’d go with the GraEagle. It’s a steal. I’m happy, though, that Otis Kenyon, despite being so new, has already shown up locally. I think their first release shows a lot of promise. I especially enjoyed their merlot. I’ll post tasting notes when we open one of the bottles of it.

Nicholas Cole 2004 GraEagle RedWing

Last night, we opened a bottle of GraEagle RedWing from Nicholas Cole Cellars. The GraEagle is 49% cabernet sauvignon, 39% cabernet franc and 12% merlot. We first tried it at Taste of Walla Walla, but this was the first time we’d had a chance to drink it on its own.

Drinking it by itself confirmed what I thought when I tried it at the Taste – this is an outstanding wine. Even at the Taste, where my taste buds suffered a non-stop onslaught of wine after wine, the GraEagle stood out (even more than Nicholas Cole’s higher-end blend, Camille). I like the change of pace from the other red blends I’ve had lately, most of which have included grenache, petit verdot, malbec and other obscure varietals. I think the subtle flavors of a grape like malbec get lost in a blend.

That’s definitely not the case with the cabernet franc in the GraEagle. After an initial burst of fruit (mostly cherry), the wine has a nice spice to it – lots of pepper influence from the cab franc. The pepper mellows out into a long tobacco finish. It’s almost like each varietal takes over from the last in succession – fruit from the merlot, spice from the cab franc and finally, the reserved and more earthy flavors of the cab sauv. The wine is neither very acidic nor very tannic, which makes it very easy to drink (although it could stand to be slightly more tannic – it had a weaker mouthfeel than I would have expected).

A review of the wine in Wine Press Northwest says that the fruit came from a series of high-end vineyards – Klipsun, Champoux – even DuBrul – but the label and the website are mute on the subject. With the balanced acidity, it’s easy to believe that someone took a great deal of care with the fruit. Likewise, at pressing, you have to imagine that the winemaker was extremely judicious, given the gentle tannins.

I have not seen this wine for sale almost anywhere. Less than 2,000 cases were produced. We were lucky enough to stumble upon it at Bennett’s Bistro on Mercer Island for $29. It’s a little spendy, but worth it. This is easily one of the best wines I’ve had in several months.