The Wine
During the grape growing season, Eastern Washington boasts warm summer days followed by cool nights, ensuring that grapes ripen fully while retaining ample natural acidity. The 2017 Riesling reveals ripe aromas of apricot and peach preserves and zesty citrus. The wine is a crisp, clean style of late-harvest wine, with flavors of apricot nectar, citrus blossom, and refreshing tangerine. Pair this fruit-driven, food-friendly wine with a cheese platter that includes bleu cheese, smoked gouda, and chèvre, a poached pear or baked apple dessert, or with almonds and hazelnuts.
Vintage and Vineyards
2017 was one of the warmest and driest Washington growing seasons on record, and a drought year, which resulted in low-Botrytis influence, producing a crisp, clean style of late-harvest wine, with zesty citrus flavors and light honeysuckle aromas. Riesling prefers a cool climate and the vines shut down during the long hot spells, resuming the ripening process only when conditions are cooler. All of the fruit for the 2017 Riesling was grown in Yakima Valley, where the cooler mesoclimate creates conditions for slow, even ripening and complex layers of flavor.
Winemaking
Riesling is at its best in Eastern Washington when picked fully mature and fermented cold to preserve its fresh fruit character. Our Riesling is night-harvested, when the fruit is cool. Once the fruit is pressed, it is fermented in stainless steel between 48°F and 57°F. To keep the fruit focus, the new wine goes directly from stainless steel to bottle.
