Saving the Best for Last: My Visit to Seven Hills!

So I've saved the best for my last post on my summer vacation to Walla Walla, my visit to Seven Hills Winery, which is on Third Street, in the same building as the Whitehouse Crawford restaurant.  Seven Hills has long been a favorite of mine, ever since my first visit to Walla Walla back in 2002, and it seems to me they just keep getting better with time.

The entrance to the Seven Hills tasting room.

I was glad to finally be able to meet Julie Titus in person (we've been e-mail friends for a long time!) and I had the chance to meet Vicky McClellan who along with her husband Casey, founded the winery.  I also met Erik, who is in charge of marketing and Jackson, which was kind enough to give me a tour of the winery.  All of these folks are just terrific, the kind of people that you'd love to just spend an afternoon on the patio sipping wine.

That's Julie in the bright, beautiful tasting room!  She was also the broker
in arranging for me to buy a couple bottles of Cayuse!

Like many other wineries, the talk of the week was how early harvest was this year, as well as what potential impact all the smoke from the western wild fires might have on the 2015 vintage.  I imagine last week was a week full of action at the winery as grapes started flooding in.

The very first vintage, 1988 Walla Walla Cabernet Sauvignon!

Jackson took me first to the library room, where examples of past vintages are stored, and he even showed me a bottle of the very first vintage, the 1988 Cabernet Sauvignon.  We then went around to see the giant tanks where the results of the harvest will become the wines that I'll enjoy in a couple years, including a new tank that was oak and quite impressive.

The stainless steel fermentation tanks, where the harvest becomes wine!

This was new and just so cool, I really want one!

From the tanks for fermenting, we went to the barrel room, where the wines are aged until they are ready to be bottled.  There were some impressive barrels in that room!

So much wine, so little time!

Finally, it was back to the tasting room to try some of the wonderful wines I've come to love.  We tasted the 2012 Ciel du Cheval, which was drinking quite nicely now, but will likely develop into an even more impressive wine over the next few years.  The 2013 Malbec was a surprise, as I've not been a big fan of the varietal in the past, but this one was delicious.  We also tasted the 2013 vintages of the Merlot and Petit Verdot, both of which were drinking quite nicely despite their youth.  Finally, we had to taste the 2012 Pentad, which I already love (and reviewed back in April here: Link).

Back in the tasting room with a view into the barrel room.

As always, it was a great time and I took home a bunch of wine, including a couple of the commemorative magnums of the 25th vintage, 2012 Walla Walla Cabernet Sauvignon.  If you ever get to Walla Walla, you owe it to yourselves to visit Seven Hills, they have spectacular wines and the people are even better!

Forgeron - A Tasting and a Tour!

Well, I'm back home from vacation, and since its so hard to do blog posts and drive, I'll have just a few more posts to write about my wonderful vacation tasting wines in Walla Walla!  Tonight I've decided to do a review of my experience at Forgeron Cellars, a winery located in a former blacksmith shop in Walla Walla at the corner of Third and Birch Streets.  I first discovered Forgeron on a road trip to Walla Walla back in 2012 and I've been a fan ever since!

This is where the action starts, this week this area was probably humming with activity.
The destemmer is on the right, while the wine press is on the left under the roof.

Jessica was kind enough to do the tour for me, which is apparently offered in Walla Walla at 1:00 pm each Saturday, so next time you are there call ahead and ask to be part of the tour!  We talked quite a bit about harvest (just about everyone was talking about it), which was exceedingly early this year with many vineyards beginning to harvest this week!  Jessica showed me where the grapes come in, the destemmer, press, and then the giant stainless steel tanks where the wine is fermented and ready to be barreled.

This is the destemmer which removes stems and other debris before the grapes are crushed.

The giant stainless steel tanks where the wine is fermented.

Once in the barrel, the wines are separated as the white wines are cold fermented at about 10 degrees cooler than the red.  Each barrel contains about 25 cases of wine and Forgeron makes approximately 7,000 cases per year.  Most of their barrels are French oak with a minority of American oak, but like most wineries, they also utilize a number of neutral barrels in part of the aging process.  Chardonnay, for which Marie-Eve Gilla is most widely known, is aged in barrel for approximately eight months, Syrah and Zinfandel are aged about 14 months and Cabernet and Merlot are aged 16 months.

This is the barrel room for the white wines, if I recall correctly.
Each barrel is coded and labeled with its contents.

Now to the wines we tasted!  I started with the 2012 Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, which I had a glass to nurse on the tour.  It was a classic, smooth and very dry Cabernet with lots of dark ripe fruit and spice.  This particular vintage has about 10% Petit Verdot, which adds a bit of complexity to the wine.  Then we tasted the 2012 Zinfandel from the Alder Ridge Vineyard in the Horse Heaven Hills.  This was a classic Zin, with lots of ripe berry fruit and some lovely floral notes that make this a wonderful, food friendly wine, ideal for pizza night!

The tasting room, located at the front of the winery building.  My tour guide, Jessica is on the right.

The final wine we tasted was the 2012 Facon Rouge, a classic Rhone GSM blend that I reviewed back in June (see the review here: 2012 Facon Rouge).  I really enjoyed it then, and at the tasting I still enjoyed it and learned a bit more about it.  Jessica informed me that this is one of their only wines that use whole cluster fermentation, where everything, grapes, stems and all are fermented, providing for some much more intense earthy notes.  So that was my tasting and tour, I also was lucky enough to pick up a few bottles of the Zinfandel and 2014 Rose of Sangiovese which will be the topics of future posts.  Cheers!