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MORE WASHINGTON WINES
- LEONETTI CELLAR
 This winery has achieved some sort of cult status,
producing small quantities of lavishly oaked red wines. It started out back in 1977 and
production tallied but 500 cases. Today Gary and Nancy Figgins have about 20 acres of
vineyards and produce something like 5,000 cases.
Dial up their phone line and you'll hear Gary, sounding somewhat like "Father Guido
Sarducci," telling you they don't-a have-a enough-a wine-a for-a their-a own-a- table.
Sorry.
Photo: Inside the original Leonetti winery building....barrel racks and
topping wine containers.
In the new winery, Gary says the barrels will be at ground level, not stacked!
The original winery is a gorgeous small stone building. Just completed is a fabulous
cellar, complete with three amazing underground aging caves or galleries. Gary says,
"The barrels will be just one high. No stacks of cooperage."
Those who have visited the top estates in Bordeaux know this is a sign of prosperity!
Estates such as Mouton-Rothschild and Lafite do not have stacks of barrels,
making topping and racking somewhat easier.
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Along with a "Reserve" red blend, they make Cabernet, Merlot and Sangiovese.
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Figgins is somewhat "the grand old man" of Walla Walla wine history.
In blind-tastings, Leonetti wines have usually placed first. They are the
"Caymus" of the Pacific Northwest (or perhaps Caymus is the Leonetti of
California?). In 1996 Chateau Ste. Michelle gave up some fruit to allow Figgins to make
wine. A freeze had ruined his crop. Figgins even bought Merlot in Sonoma and Cabernet in
Napa in that vintage! As we get so few bottles of their wines, we typically
"share" one or two in the Tasting Room and the few others are snapped up upon
arrival by good customers.
The current wines are delicious, as usual. A few bottles are available
as of this writing (August 2010). These are reserved for walk-in
customers only.
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- Currently in stock: We Have Sangiovese, Merlot,
Cabernet and "Reserve"...uniformly fabulous!
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- CHATEAU STE. MICHELLE
 With more than 1600 acres of vineyards, Ste. Michelle is
Washington State's wine "ambassador". It's sister company, Columbia Crest, owns
2,000 acres. Both are owned by Stimson Lane, a company which is a subsidiary of U.S.
Tobacco. Who would expect that Chateau Ste. Michelle Fume Blanc and Skoal Chewing
Tobacco would be "cousins"?
Today, what with one company swallowing up another, Ste. Michelle Wine
Estates (it was called Stimson Lane until just recently) is now under the
conglomerate called Altria (its roots are in tobacco and snuff, but Philip
Morris Tobacco is under their ownership and they own Kraft General
Foods...suffice it to say, this once little wine company is now the big fish
in the modest-sized Washington State "pond."
They make scads of wines...there's a winery devoted to white wines and
another to making red wines.
Joshua Maloney makes their red wines, while Wendy Stuckey takes care of the
whites. Overseeing the two is Bob Bertheau whose title is "head
winemaker."
 They make a tremendous range of wines,
from basic, simple stuff to their vineyard-designated series to deluxe, premium quality
wines. Stimson Lane tried to lure the owner of Chateau Pichon Lalande to
collaborate with them on a Cabernet project as Chateau Mouton-Rothschild has done with
Robert Mondavi, creating Opus One. She turned them down...In fact, May
Eliane de Lencquesaing asked ME what I thought about her teaming up with
these people. Back in those days, Ste. Michelle was not exactly making
wines in the same league as Pichon Lalande and I told her so...they would
gain more by her being associated that she'd gain. In fact, it might
have taken some of the luster off her own wonderful estate.
Today, though, Ste. Michelle has a number of collaborative projects.
Well, Ste. Michelle Wine Estates does.
With Italy's Antinori family they make a Washington State Cabernet called
Col Solare. In Napa, they own a brand called Antica. In Chile,
there's the Haras de Pirque brand of wines.
With Germany's famed winemaker, Ernst Loosen, they make a Riesling in
Washington called "Eroica." I've suggested they add the
letter "t" to this in order to stimulate the brand's popularity.
The Ste. Michelle brand produces reliable-quality wines. It's a bit
like Washington's version of the Robert Mondavi winery of the 21st
Century: nicely made wines, maybe not the most inspired, but at least
they're well-made.
You'll find the wine of Ste. Michelle and its sister, Columbia Crest, to
garner great accolades from publications such as The Wine Spectator.
We must remember that this company also spends a considerable amount of
money on advertising. Some people suggest there's a correlation
between advertising dollars and favorable reviews.
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- We taste these from time to time. Some wines are better than
average, but we've not found wines as interesting as those from Woodward
Canyon, Leonetti or L'Ecole 41, frankly.
The brand is so huge these days, they target their sales efforts in stores
such as grocery businesses like Safeway and Lucky or chain operations such
as Trader Joe's.
We don't have anything in the shop presently...
HEDGES CELLARS - Tom Hedges was in the food commodities brokering business in the 1970s and
traveled around the world. He'd been headquartered in places such as
Buenos Aires and Vancouver, British Columbia as well as foreign locations
such as Pennsylvania and Arizona.
His wife is French born and he met her in Mexico.
At some point he'd had a request from a Swedish concern to see about
exporting some well-priced wines. This was the start of what is today
a rather successful Washington State wine company. Hedges put together
a shipment of wine and later built a winery and planted a vineyard.
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- Before this, though, he and Mrs. Hedges has shipped California and
Washington wines to Taiwan, so this wasn't a completely foreign
business.
In 1989 the Hedges purchased 50 acres of property in what is today known as
the "Red Mountain" region of the Yakima Valley and they started to
plant vineyards. In 1995 they built their "chateau" and
today they made some good, solid entry-level wine as well as a
reasonably-priced "CMS" wines.
The white CMS is Chardonnay, Marsanne and Sauvignon Blanc.
We're partial to the red, a blend of Cabernet, Merlot and Syrah. It's
a young wine and it's intended to be consumed in its youth. There's a
bit of dark fruit on the nose and a touch of vanillin, too, from the
wood. The tannin level is low, so this is not a wine for cellaring
more than a year or two or three.
The Hedges "Red Mountain" tasted sweet to me when we included it
in a blind-tasting of Washington State clarets. It seemed more like a
big production wine from a big production, commercial winery.
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- Currently in stock: 2008 HEDGES "CMS" RED List
$15 SALE $11.99
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- GLEN FIONA
 This small winery is owned by Berle Figgins. His brother owns
the famous Leonetti Cellar. Located in Walla Walla, Figgins is a fan of Rhone varieties
and is dabbling with Syrah and Viognier and other assorted grapes. With Italian and Irish
heritage, Figgins chose the name "Glen Fiona" explaining it as being Gaelic for
"Valley of the Vines". Apparently Mr. Figgins is also a vineyard manager for
several other vineyards. He's spent some time learning about Syrah in Australia, so he has
a well-rounded perspective on this variety.
I can't say his wine reminds me much of a top Cote-Rotie or Hermitage, nor are they
similar to Australian Syrah (Shiraz) wines. The variety seems to be less spicy (at
least by what I've tasted) than some of its cousins in other parts of the world.- 1995 Walla Walla Syrah $44.99
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