Washington Harvest,

Saturday, October 6th, 2pm

Crush is in full swing in Washington with the grapes coming in and starting their wonderful transformation into wine. To celebrate, this Saturday we’ll be pouring a fine line up of local juice, showing off just a little of the state’s depth and variety. Come have a toast to the Harvest.

Windfall Winery, Asian Pear Wine  $14
Windfall Winery is the brainchild of San Juan Island-based Larry Soll who put his science background and love of making fruit wines into the creation of AP. The pear wine, at a mellow 12% alcohol, is aged in oak for two months. This gives AP a more wine-like taste and feel on the tongue. It retains some of the exotic flavors of its Asian pear origins, but has citrus notes and subtle oak overtones.
 
2010 ShootingStar, Aligoté   $14
Shooting Star is the work of Sonoma winemaker Jed Steele, who seeing unique possibilities in Washington fruit, headed north. Aligoté is the fourth most planted wine grape variety in the world, but not widely known as itself.   It is cold tolerant and in Washington State, where cold winters are a fact of life, it has found a happy home. The grapes for the ShootingStar come from a two acre vineyard in Sunnyside. The Aligoté is barrel fermented in older oak barrels. The wine is crisp and clean, a wine with a nice balance of fruit and acidity. Flinty, mineral elements mix with a light floral hint on the nose, followed with the suggestion of tart/sweet apple on the palette.

2011 Baer, Shard   $18
Baer Winery, one of the early innovators of Woodinville, makes some complex and compelling wines. The cooler fall of 2011 was great for white wines, and the Shard is showing that to great advantage. All stainless with no oak contact and no malolactic fermentation, the Shard is an excellent food wine; the acid is balanced by creaminess, with notes of crisp pear and apple.

ShootingStar, Blue Franc $13
Lemberger
Blau Frankisch, literally blue grape from France is another name for our local Lemberger. The Blue Franc receives little, or no, oak aging. The wine is clean, crisp, and unpretentious with tons of fruit, including warm berry pie, complementing the traces of pepper, almond, cherry and cinnamon with soft tannins and a medium body.

2009 Baer, Arctos $45
64% Cabernet Sauvignon, 17% Petit Verdot, 13% Cabernet Franc, 6% Merlot
A very serious Washington Bordeaux style blend, the Arctos sees 19 months in French oak barrels, 88% of which are new. Like the Shard, this is all single vineyard, Stillwater creek fruit. A blend to be reckoned with, the next evolution of Arctos is bolder than before. Structured, with lots of tannins it is concentrated and fleshy, the finish is plush and long carried on the nose by ripe blackberry and cassis, followed by espresso and roasted herb.

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