Tag Archives: Lake Chelan

Review of Chelan Ridge 2009 Chardonnay

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Wine: Chelan Ridge 2009 Chardonnay
Appellation: Columbia Valley (but sold in the Lake Chelan AVA area)
ALC: n/a
Price: $16
Haydn gives this wine: 96pts
You can buy this wine: Give Chelan Ridge a call at (509) 687-4455. The website is on its way.

I had the fortunate good luck to be able to attend Chelan Ridge’s soft grand opening in August in Lake Chelan. The winery had literally just put up their large “open” sign outside of the winery. The gardeners were still landscaping the fairly steep driveway as we crept around to the top. It’s still getting a bit of polish, but overall, this winery is ready for business.

The winery is located in the Lake Chelan AVA, a new wine region encompassing parts of Lake Chelan, which is located about 200 miles east of Seattle, Washington. The Lake Chelan AVA is a sub-AVA of the Columbia Valley AVA.

Chelan Ridge features four wines, complimentary, as part of their tasting schedule. The tasting room sits atop, well, a ridge overlooking Lake Chelan. To the left of the winery are rows running all along the hillside. On the other side of the tasting room is the barrel room, where you can see the various oak barrels interspersed with the stainless steel tanks.

Among the wines, the Chardonnay was the most impressive (96pts). The wine showcased ripe granny smith apples that danced around the mid-palate along with honeysuckle and a bit of vanilla. The honeysuckle was also present on the bouquet of the Chardonnay, to which I must have spent a good minute or two simply smelling it. In addition, you can also find a bit of apricot upfront. The secret to this magical Chardonnay is in the winemaking. Lynn and Henry Munneke, winemakers and owners, chose to use a combination of 50% new French Oak and 50% neutral French Oak. But wait, there’s more. They blended the two in a stainless steel tank, stabilized it and then put it in bottle. The stainless steel prevents the wine from continuing to soak up the oak from the barrel, and allows the two to harmonize in essentially a cold bath.

In Lynn’s words, “We were striving to produce a delicate, fruit-forward Chardonnay, with subtle toasted oak”. And she nailed it. The Chardonnay, among all the intricate descriptive adjectives, is simply gorgeous. You can taste the delicate craftsmanship in the wine. This might be the wine that is leading the charge to a new Chardonnay day. The amount of light oak combined with the stainless steel tank makes the Chardonnay blossom to what it should be—a Chardonnay. Not a butterball oakmonster.

Lake Chelan currently goes everything from Cab Franc to Pinot Noir to Grenache. It’s still a young wine region, and it remains to be seen what varietals will thrive here. Aside from Riesling which is a likely shoe-in, with the cooler winters mixed with the lake-effect that keeps the area from a total freeze-zone, I suspect that various more resilient grapes, such as the Chardonnay will do well in the area. And great winemaking will only add to the splendor that is Lake Chelan and Chelan Ridge Winery.

And on a personal note, kudos to Lynn and Henry Munneke on their excellent winemaking and congratulations on the opening of your winery. I can’t wait to see how the wine progresses over the years. I was honored to be at your soft grand opening and to taste your wines.

Cheers,
Haydn

Follow Haydn on twitter at @haydnadams

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Haydn Adams is the author of the book, Wineries Beyond Napa Valley: Dry Creek and Alexander Valley, an insider’s tasting guide to the hidden gems region. He also contributes to the Beyond Napa Valley Wine Blog, writes for vinvillage.com, and can be found roaming the hills of Sonoma County (and Lake Chelan) looking for the next hidden gems. You can contact him at haydn@beyondnapavalley.com

Haydn’s take on the Lake Chelan AVA

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Question: What do you get if you combine the Rhone region of France, with Spain, Germany and the California regions of Dry Creek & Paso Robles? Answer: I have no idea. And that’s the case with Lake Chelan’s wines. It’s still too young to tell what varietal will be king of the region. However that’s not to say there aren’t great wines to be had. You just have to know where to look.

The Lake Chelan AVA is only a year and a half old, officially, and, like sampling wine out of the barrel, one can only give their best estimate to how it will preform once it’s been through bottle shock. That being said, a good winemaker & vineyard manager can give a pretty good guesstimation to what that wine will do. Here’s a recap of my three-day whirlwind tasting through Lake Chelan’s wine district.

It’s new & growing (in a good way)

I must have tried about 15 different varietals over a three-day tasting around the like. All of the Spanish reds were there: Tempranillo & Grenache. There were a few Bordeaux blends present (though the Petit Verdot was MIA), a few Italians made their presence around the sloping waterfront hillsides, and nearly everyone had an Alsacian, a.k.a, a Riesling. In addition, the Pinot grape also made a cameo, alongside a Sparkling. In my thirst (no pun intended) to figure out which varietal does the best per the climate, I came away still not knowing. I figure with a few more years, a few gems will begin to emerge.

Wines by the glass

What through me for a loop was that all the wineries I visited had their wines available by the glass. It was something I had rarely seen in a winery, let alone in all wineries. I took up the offer, and finished off my evening on the first night kicking back underneath the misters at Hard Row to Hoe (and with the mercury pushing 85+ at 6:00 at night, the misters were quite enjoyable). With most wineries offering beautiful vistas of the lake, it’s easily to indulge your taste buds while getting lost in a kodak moment.

Overall Impression

While it is a new AVA, certain wineries could have fooled me into thinking they have been around for a decade or longer (ok, for the record, Lake Chelan winery has been around for a decade). However with scenic vistas of grapes seeming to flow endlessly to the water’s edge, very hospitable staff members, and a myriad of varietals to choose from, Chelan ranks high on the desirability scale when choosing which AVA to vacation in. It is a drive to get to from the Seattle area (or anywhere else for that matter). But trust me. When you get here, you won’t want to leave. It’s just too gosh darn beautiful. Welcome to the big leagues Lake Chelan (AVA).

Cheers,
Haydn

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Haydn Adams is the author of the book, Wineries Beyond Napa Valley: Dry Creek and Alexander Valley, an insider’s tasting guide to the hidden gems region. He also contributes to the Beyond Napa Valley Wine Blog, writes for vinvillage.com, and can be found roaming the hills of Sonoma County looking for the next hidden gems. You can contact him at haydn@beyondnapavalley.com

Haydn’s Review of the Hard Row to Hoe Shameless Hussy Sangiovese Dry Rose

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Winery: Hard Row to Hoe
Appellation: Lake Chelan AVA (just established last year!)
Price: $22
Haydn gives this wine: 90pts
You can buy this wine: Hard Row to Hoe’s website

At least for me, when it comes to summertime, the rose wine jumps right up to the top. Along with those crisp whites (hello New Zealand), the cool and refreshingness of  a rose is hard to beat. And when wine tasting in a region where the summer temps are hovering in the 90s, something cold is almost always something good.

Such was the case with the Hard Row to Hoe Shameless Hussy Rose, made from the Sangiovese grape. When describing this wine, I realized all of the bad Freudian slips that could easily be derived from such a tempting name. Without going all the way (sorry, no pun intended) into their history, the cliff notes go something like this: It’s based upon a brothel whereby the only mode of transportation to get there was by boat, or row boat, in the name’s case.

This rose is made for the summer. It’s crisp, refreshing, and loaded with bright berries, including strawberries and raspberries. The nose is beautiful with images of red berries dancing around your nose. It would go great with crab cakes (no, not those crabs) and cool brie cheese on a sunny afternoon.

As a Lake Chelan wine tasting virgin, this was a great wine to taste what Lake Chelan can produce, be it in a Rose. Overall Hard Row to Hoe’s wines were balanced with a comfortable amount of tannins and acid to them. And while the Syrah was the wine that won out to sip out on their covered balcony with misters running at full strength, the rose left one of the biggest, um, impressions in my mine. I now need to go was my… glass.

Cheers,
Haydn

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Haydn Adams is the author of the book, Wineries Beyond Napa Valley: Dry Creek and Alexander Valley, an insider’s tasting guide to the hidden gems region. He also contributes to the Beyond Napa Valley Wine Blog, writes for vinvillage.com, and can be found roaming the hills of Sonoma County looking for the next hidden gems. You can contact him at haydn@beyondnapavalley.com