2007 Giuseppe Campagnola Amarone della Valpolicella

Happy Independence Day eve!  Yes, summer is in full swing and the fireworks are blazing, but it's also the first Saturday in July, which means this is Cellar Saturday!  I will open a bottle of something at least a decade in the making and share it with you.  Tonight I've dug out a nice Italian wine (I'm convinced that the big wines of Italy are best when they are allowed to mature for at least a decade), one that I'm not sure where I bought it, the 2007 Giuseppe Campagnola Amarone della Valpolicella.  Amarone is a special wine from the north of Italy, where the grapes are allowed to dry before pressing, revealing a fabulous concentration of flavor.  So let's see how this one is tasting!

The wine is a deep, inky purple in the glass with lovely garnet along the edges, making this look more like a Cabernet than a Valpolicella.  After letting this one breathe for an hour or so, a quick swirl in the glass reveals rustic aromas of leather, anise, green grass and mulberry.  Take a sip and you get unexpected flavors of strawberry, ripe cherry and plum that transition easily to some earthy notes of peat and dusty limestone midpalate.  The tannins are nicely structured to provide a great base for the long dry finish, with a quick burst of acidity at the end.

Overall, I would rate this wine a solid 9, as it has certainly come into its own over the past 14 years.  This wine would be ideal with lamb, wild mushroom risotto, or a hearty steak.  Tonight I am enjoying this wine with a prime tomahawk ribeye grilled Pittsburgh rare, topped with some of the last of the season's garlic scapes and some grilled asparagus. Cheers!

Walla Walla Wine Tasting Vacation - Day 2

Well, it's a tough job, but somebody has to do it!  Vacationing that is...today I started out by going to the Fort Walla Walla Museum, seeing some wonderful exhibits on the history of Walla Walla and the settlements here from pioneer days just after Lewis and Clark made their expedition.  And then it was down to the serious business of wine tasting.  I started the afternoon at Seven Hills Winery, one of my long-time favorites going back to my very first trip to Walla Walla in 2001.  

I had a wonderful time tasting some wines that I already had in my cellar, like the 2016 Seven Hills Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon which is drinking even more beautifully now than in 2019.  I was hosted wonderfully by Emma, and then Julie came out to have a nice conversation with me, and we had a chance to do a side-by-side tasting of the 2018 Pentad with the 2019 Pentad from the barrel.  The new vintage is very interesting and will make an intriguing wine by the time it's released.

We then chatted about some of the changes coming to the winery with a new restaurant that will soon open, replacing Whitehouse Crawford, which closed during Covid.  This will provide some nice opportunities to combine more food and wine pairings in the future.

When I finished at Seven Hills, it was off to see Mary Darby at DaMa Wines.  Mary is always a pleasure to talk with, and good conversation makes hours seems like minutes, and of course sipping on wine during that time may have helped the time go fast!

Of course, sipping on wine and enjoying good conversation makes distractions an acute hazard, which is why I ended up leaving with a half dozen tamales from the tamale lady that stopped by.  What in the world am I going to do with tamales with another week and 4,000 miles to go?  Well, I don't have an answer to that, but I can confirm those were some of the most delicious tamales I've had!

Cheers!

Walla Walla Wine Tasting Vacation - Day 1

Well, I have to admit, vacationing is hard work!  I am enjoying a few days of wining and dining in Walla Walla on my summer vacation national park tour.  I started the day with a drive to the Columbia Gorge to take some photos of the mighty Columbia River and then I drove back into town for stops at Woodward Canyon and L'Ecole No. 41 to taste a bit and buy some wine.  Then it was off to my first official tasting of the day at Reininger Winery, one of my long time favorites.

Reininger has made some changes to their tasting room, though some of the artwork is still the classic, showing Raul (aka Mr. Owl).

Having tasted through some of the classic Helix and Reininger red wines, including the new Helix Crush Crew Red (count me a big fan, but more on that in a future post.  Eventually, we got to tour the barrel room and do a bit of barrel tasting.  The barrel room was such a relief given that the outside temperature over the past few days has been well into the triple digits!

We had a chance to taste some of the 2020 Tempranillo, which is still extremely young and in development, though to be fair I thought it tasted like a glass of beef, so this one could shape up to be a very interesting wine.  Then we tasted a bit of the 2015 Cima, which will be the next vintage releases of this super Tuscan style wine.  It was shaping up very nicely, and I am looking forward to tasting this wine when it's released.

Having enjoyed a wonderful couple hours with the folks at Reininger, it was off to Pepper Bridge for a tasting on the south side of town.  

Pepper Bridge is probably one of my favorite places to taste wine, as it's just a beautiful setting with gorgeous views of the vineyard, and to add to the ambiance, they recently remodeled their tasting room with wonderfully clean decor.

After tasting through a the wine club tasting flight, including the 2018 Trine, 2018 Merlot, 2017 Pepper Bridge Vineyard and 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon.  All of the wines were tasting wonderfully, and some have developed nicely since I reviewed them initially (including the 2017 Pepper Bridge Vineyard).  They also do a nice job customizing the tasting menu for wine club members, making you feel like an honored guest.

Although Jean Francois was not available today, winery founder and "founding father" of the Walla Walla wine industry, Norm McKibben stopped by to say hello to all of us in the tasting room.  He offered some nice perspective on the potential impact of the recent heatwave on the vineyards and the potential for the 2021 vintage.  He is always someone that's a pleasure to speak with, as he provides a great perspective on how nature can be fickle in the vineyard, just like any agricultural venture.  

Overall, it was a wonderful first day of wine tasting, followed by a wonderful dinner of Alder smoked duck with dirty rice, scallion and spring green kimchi and kalbi sauce at Hattaway's, a wonderful southern comfort food restaurant in Walla Walla.  Cheers!