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.

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.

Tasting Notes: Isenhower Cellars 2003 River Beauty Syrah

Isenhower Cellars is a sentimental favorite around our house. We met the Isenhower’s when they had first opened their winery and were doing tastings out of the old train depot in downtown Walla Walla. Denise and Brett Isenhower are really nice people and really good winemakers. At the time, they were waiting for the next big freeze to hit Walla Walla so they could start planting vines. We became some of the earliest people to sign up for their wine club.

The next two times we visited the winery, they had their own facility south of town. It’s simple, but very nice. And the wine has only gotten better with the passing years. My favorite is the Wild Alfalfa, a smoky, syrupy syrah. They also produce an excellent cabernet sauvignon.

Tonight, though, I opened the River Beauty, and it’s nothing like the Wild Alfalfa. In fact, it’s a very unusual syrah. Instead of smoke and pepper, what you get is rich fruit. I guess you’d say it tastes like cassis, but I’d rather call a spade a spade – it smells and tastes like a grape. It’s not obnoxiosuly fruity, nor is it sweet – it has a long chalky finish and a slight pucker – but it is one of the most fruit forward syrah’s I think I’ve ever tasted.

Taste of Walla Walla

The Taste of Walla Walla proved to be a really difficult format for tasting wine.

It was an exercise in excess, with what seemed like every winery in Walla Walla taking part – among the 50 wineries represented, the only notable absence I can think of was Cayuse.  The event was short – just two hours. The venue was crowded. At times, the areas that were set up for tasting at the Tower Club on the 76th floor of the Columbia Tower were packed, shoulder to shoulder.  It was a cattle call – a total stampede to get to the wines. I also can’t figure out why they held it on a Monday, starting at 5:00. They had only cheese and bread (both of which ran out within the first 45 minutes), meaning most everyone was tasting on an empty stomach.

As a result, all pretenses I might have had of actually remembering what each wine tasted like went straight out the window after maybe 15 minutes. Despite that, a few wines and impressions stood out:

• Even with my palate completely deadened, the Nicholas Cole Graeagle blend was very distinctive and different – in a good way.
• The Woodward Canyon Old Vines Cabernet Sauvignon was excellent. I often see it at McCarthy Schiering, but haven’t bought it, I think because of the label (which is a sad statement on judging a bottle by its cover). [I later found out it retails for around $72, which may be another reason I haven't bought it.]
• I enjoyed the Seven Hills Ciel du Cheval blend. It had a broader spectrum of flavors than the similarly named wine by Cadence that I tried last week.
• After tasting at Abeja’s table (where the wine was as incredible as always), we visited A Maurice, a relatively new winery. A Maurice (amicably) hired away Abeja’s assistant winemaker, Ned, to be their head winemaker. I was impressed with the red blend they were pouring, and I’m excited that Ned’s going to be their winemaker – we had a tasting appointment at Abeja last summer, and he was the one who showed us around. Nice guy, great winemaker – it will be interesting to see what A Maurice produces over the next few years.
• I had been hoping to try the Tamarack Cellars DuBrul that I have in my cellar, since I don’t want to open the bottle just yet. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any to pour. No surprise – it was very limited in quantity. He was pouring the Cabernet Franc, which I similarly don’t want to open yet, but my palate was too dulled to taste it.
• I only tried one wine at Yellow Hawk Cellars - a sangiovese. Yellow Hawk specializes in Italian varietals. Tasting the sangiovese re-confirmed my reaction to Maryhill’s sangiovese – I don’t care for this grape, no matter how well the wine is made. The basic flavor of this wine was the same as the Maryhill. Not undrinkable, but not my thing.

I may post more notes later, but all in all, this isn’t an event I’d be likely to attend again. It’s just too much. It doesn’t help that it came directly on the heels of the Northwest Cask Beer Festival, which I was still somewhat recovering from when this event rolled around. I’d rather invest the four or five hours, drive out to Walla Walla and be able to taste at my leisure than feel like I have to try 20-30 wines in quick succession.