This past weekend, the Washington wine industry hosted its 23rd annual Auction of Washington Wines. The Auction has raised more than $24 million since its inception in 1988 to benefit the uncompensated care program at Seattle Children’s Hospital and since 2001, the Washington Wine Education Foundation, funding viticultural and enological research across the state. This year’s Auction raised over $1.4 million.

The three-day event included a Barrel Auction and Picnic with the Winemakers, winemaker dinners, a run/walk, and a Gala Auction. Dad (John) and I attended the Barrel Auction and Picnic at Chateau Ste. Michelle in Woodinville, Washington. This was the first year that we have had the pleasure to attend, and it truly is an outstanding event for a great cause.

The highlight of the Picnic is the Barrel Auction itself in which bidders have the chance to win future, limited-release wines from twenty participating wineries. All attendees have the opportunity to taste wines from those participating wineries to determine whether or not they want to bid. While we did not taste them all, our favorites of the ones we did taste were the 2009 Woodward Canyon Old Vines Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2009 Grand Reve Collaboration Series VI (Mourvedre/Syrah/Grenache), and the 2007 Adams Bench Red Willow Cabernet Sauvignon. In fact, Dad (John) was one of the winning bidders for a case of 2009 Adams Bench Red Willow Cabernet Sauvignon. We’re looking forward to its release in 2012. The picnic also featured a silent auction and games including a Restaurant Balloon Pop, Wheel of Wine, and Ring Toss. The proceeds for this year’s Barrel Auction and Picnic totaled more than $60,000.

In addition to outstanding wines, Picnic attendees were also served wonderful food prepared by the talented chefs from Tulalip Resort Casino. I had the pleasure to get a sneak preview of the food at a tweet-up earlier this month so I made sure to make the rounds at the food tents. Once again, I was blown away by the creations of Tulalip’s amazing pastry chef Nikol Nakamura. Her goober bars, strawberry pop tarts, and brownie cheesecake pops themselves were worth the price of admission.

According to Ryan Pennington of the Washington Wine Commission, 1,100 tickets were sold for the Barrel Auction and Picnic, which was an increase over the last two years. If you weren’t able to attend this year’s Auction, I encourage you to go ahead and mark your calendar for next year, August 18-20, 2011. It truly is a great weekend for both Washington wine and charity.

Today’s post is part of a series featuring the Women of Washington Wine. In an industry once dominated by men, more and more women are joining the ranks as winery owners, vineyard owners, and winemakers. Being a woman myself, I am fascinated by these women and what they have done and continue to do. Through this series, I hope to introduce you to some of the brightest female faces in the Washington wine industry.

Leslie Balsley and her husband Rod founded William Church Winery in 2005. The winery, located in the warehouse district in Woodinville, Washington, is named after both of their fathers. After years in the high-tech industry, Leslie and Rod are thoroughly enjoying their second careers in the wine industry. With the help of assistant winemaker Marcus Rafanelli, Leslie and Rod are both actively involved in all aspects of the winery. William Church Winery produces 2,000 cases per year.

Recently, Leslie was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to answer some questions for me and our Wine Peeps readers.

Highlights from Q&A with Leslie Balsley:

How did you first get involved in the wine business?
Amazingly, we moved next door to someone named Dick Gidley who had been making really good wine in his garage for over 20 years. He got us started in winemaking as a hobby.  It was Rod (my husband) who wanted to step up to the challenge of making wine for a larger audience. We then decided together that this is something we wanted to do. It was exciting because it was entirely different from our high-tech backgrounds involving agriculture, craftsmanship, and something that would be completely ours.

What were the steps that led to where you are now?
Our first steps were to determine where we wanted to have a winery. We looked in Walla Walla and the Prosser area and then discovered Woodinville had a small but vital wine community. We realized not only did we not have to move since we’re both from Western Washington, but the area had amazing potential.

Has being a woman been an advantage or a disadvantage in your wine journey?
The industry is male-dominated especially when it comes to winemakers and vineyard management but once you establish the relationships with people it becomes less of an issue. Plus, many of the people in the retail and restaurant part of the business are women.

What advice do you have for a woman wanting to get involved in the wine business today?
My perception is that if you are making excellent wine, it is respected whether you are a man or a woman. So be true to yourself, find the area of the business most exciting to you, develop relationships in the industry, and then be willing to spend time working towards your goal.

What are your thoughts about the Washington wine industry, in general?
I think it is still a young industry that has a lot of opportunity. The growth that happened over the last five years was crazy, but we are extremely fortunate to live where so many excellent wine grapes can be grown. I think we are still learning the optimal places to grow the various varietals, so our wines will only get better.

In recent years the Washington wine industry has grown at a rapid rate. Do you expect that trend to continue?
Maybe not at the same rate it has over the last 5 years, but there will still be growth for sure.

How do you and your husband, Rod, divide the duties at the winery?
Rod manages the day-to-day winemaking operations, and we consult on vineyards, varietals, and wines we want to offer. I manage the marketing and sales aspects of the winery with his input, so it is truly a partnership. We both are involved in blending trials and final wine decisions.

I understand that you spent time in the Rhone Valley of France earlier this year. What did you take away from that experience?
Since we make a Viognier and a Syrah, we really wanted to find out how those wines are done in the Rhone. In general, the Viogniers were much more mineral-driven and acidic in nature, which was interesting. Also, we tasted old vine (50-60 years old) and younger vine wines side by side, which clearly demonstrated the effect an older vine brings to the complexity and depth of the wines. They also don’t always use oak on their red wines, often using concrete instead so you could experience the pure varietal without the influence of oak. It was an amazing trip that I would recommend to anyone.

What is your vision for the future of William Church Winery?
Our vision is to continue to hone our craft. We’ve learned that there are the fundamentals of winemaking but beyond that you have to learn how to work with the different grapes sources, and, of course, the grapes vary from year to year so there is truly a craftsmanship aspect that you have to be dedicated to when creating great wine.

Feel free to share any other thoughts that you believe would be of interest to our readers.
So many of our dreams have come true in the wine business. We wanted to create wines people could enjoy and create lasting memories with, similar to what we did when we first discovered the joy of wine on our honeymoon in Italy. We wanted to create a business in which our friends and family could be involved, and we have. Plus, we’ve met so many new people who have supported us and been a big part of our success. We wanted to be a part of a community of winemakers who support each other, and we have certainly found that in Woodinville. And, we wanted to stay small so we could know our customers and stay focused on making wines with character and balance so those who try our wines would consider them some of the best in the state. Big goals, but worthy of pursuing, I think.

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Many thanks to Leslie for sharing her story and thoughts with us. I wish her and Rod all the best and will be following their work and William Church Winery with great interest, and I hope that you will too.

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is inoculate.

Official definition from Ron Herbst and Sharon Tyler Herbst’s The New Wine Lover’s Companion:
Inoculate is a winemaking technique of adding an active yeast culture or malolactic bacteria to juice, must, or wine. Winemakers often inoculate their must with known strains of reliable yeasts to activate primary fermentation and achieve their desired results. Although malolactic fermentation will sometimes occur naturally, many winemakers prefer to manage this phase by inoculating with a properly prepared malolactic bacteria starter.

Layman’s terms from Kori:
Inoculate is the winemaking process in which a winemaker adds yeast to the must to initiate fermentation.

More than a few times I’ve had someone ask me, which is the ideal setting in which to review a wine, with food or without food? My standard reply is: when do you normally drink wine, with food or without it? For most people, the answer is with food. So the best evaluations of wine for those people probably are with food.

At Wine Peeps, where we are tasting thousands of wines a year in a variety of settings, as a reader you might want to note the setting for the tasting when placing importance on a particular one of our reviews. Personally, I value the results of our monthly wine tasting dinners and weekly family private tastings the most. The reasons are that the tastings are blind tastings and with food. When I find a wine that knocks my socks off before I’ve had anything to eat and then continues to be my favorite all the way through the evening with the meal, I would give our review of that wine the ultimate in credibility.

Over the years, those of us who taste multiple wines virtually every day develop a memory bank of the main characteristics of each varietal we taste regularly: aroma and taste flavors, acidity, tannins, and so on. We have a standard in our minds and can tell very quickly if a wine is fundamentally sound and measures up to that standard or not. Quite often, the wines we serve in our blind tastings with meals are wines that first caught our attention in a public or trade tasting, a blind samples tasting, or even in a tasting room. Therefore, a good review from a blind tasting with food is a validation of our first impression.

One further question that frequently comes up when we talk about wine with food reviews is: how can a vegetarian or vegan reviewer fully evaluate a big red wine best enjoyed with red meat? It’s a good question, and one I haven’t been able to answer, nor find a good answer. [If you have any insight to help answer this question, please feel free to share in the comments.] We on the Wine Peeps team eat whatever LaGayle calls for in her wine and food pairings, whether it’s a juicy steak, a pork tenderloin, chicken marsala, shrimp etouffee, etc. You name it; we’ll eat it paired with the appropriate wine(s). It’s tough duty, but someone has to do it.

Cheers!

Would you like a quick suggestion for a good wine to drink tonight (or this weekend) that won’t break your budget and is widely available? Many of our readers have said this is something they would like, so here is this week’s selection, the 2007 Boomtown Cabernet Sauvignon from the Columbia Valley of Washington State.

Our selection criteria include:

• A very good Quality rating of >=3.5 stars (out of 5)
• A price tag of <=$15
• Must be widely available

Boomtown is the entry level value brand produced by Dusted Valley Vintners. Dusted Valley Vintners, located in Walla Walla, Washington, was founded in 2003 by brothers-in-law Chad Johnson and Corey Braunel who are co-owners and co-winemakers. Both Chad and Corey are originally from Wisconsin and are proud cheese-heads. In fact, they bring a bit of Wisconsin to Dusted Valley by using barrels made from Wisconsin oak to age their wines. Last summer, they opened a new tasting room in Woodinville near the Hollywood Schoolhouse for those on the west side of the mountains who cannot make frequent trips to Walla Walla.

If you live in Washington or visit the state, I encourage you to put one of the Dusted Valley tasting rooms on your must-visit list. You won’t find a stuffy, uppity attitude but rather friendly, welcoming folks with a good sense of humor. Their wine club is known as the Stained Tooth Society with new members receiving a logoed toothbrush when they join.

2007 Boomtown Cabernet Sauvignon (Columbia Valley, Washington): Deep, purplish red in color. Aromatic with black plum, blackberry, and licorice on the nose. Leather, licorice, black plum, and blackcurrant come through on the palate. Medium to full-bodied and lively with medium, dry tannins, and a long finish. A great weeknight wine.
Quality: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 5 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to buy: Fred Meyer (Seattle, Washington), $14; Available elsewhere, $13 to $14

Red Willow Vineyard is one of the top vineyards in Washington State. Located in the northwest corner of the Yakima Valley near Wapato, Washington, Red Willow is a fourth-generation family farm, owned and operated by Mike Sauer and his family. Red Willow has one of the oldest Cabernet Sauvignon blocks in the state, planted in 1973, and the first Syrah block in the state, planted in 1986. The iconic Monsignor Chapel sits atop Red Willow and gives the vineyard a distinct identity.

On our recent trip to the Yakima Valley, we had the pleasure to visit Red Willow Vineyard again. It had been two years since our first visit with the Sauers. It was great to see Mike Sauer and his son Jonathan again as well as meet Jonathan’s wife Kelly and Mike’s son-in-law Rick Willsey. The Sauers are truly one of the finest families in wine country.

Through the years, Mike Sauer and Red Willow Vineyard have been involved in many viticultural research efforts and have experimented with numerous grape varieties. Red Willow Vineyard has had a longstanding relationship with Columbia Winery, formerly known as Associated Vintners, which dates back to 1978. For almost 30 years, Columbia Winery sourced Red Willow fruit almost exclusively. However, in 2005, Columbia started giving up some of their blocks, which allowed other notable Washington producers the opportunity to source this prized fruit. While Columbia is still one of their largest customers, this diversification is allowing the true potential and value of the vineyard to be realized. We have been closely watching the releases of Red Willow wines from some of our favorite wineries including Betz Family Winery, Owen Roe, and Adams Bench. It is exciting to see the different styles that each winemaker brings to the table with fruit from the same vineyard. While Red Willow’s place in the history of the Washington wine industry is already well established, I am glad to see their tradition expanding through these new partnerships as consumers see the Red Willow name on more bottles.

Read more about Red Willow Vineyard in previous posts:

• Red Willow Vineyard: The Mother of Washington Syrah
• Red Willow Vineyard: Wines We Tasted
• Red Willow Vineyard: A Look Ahead
• Plowing Ahead: Tracing Red Willow Vineyard’s roots to the birthplace of Washington Syrah (appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of Washington Tasting Room Magazine)

Here are my notes on several wines that we have tasted recently that are produced from Red Willow fruit:

2008 Betz La Côte Patriarche Syrah (Red Willow Vineyard, Yakima Valley, Washington): Beautiful, inky purple-black. Gorgeous nose with black fruit, smoke, floral, beef jerky, and spice aromas. Luscious black fruits on the palate. Medium to full-bodied with medium to high tannins and a long, lingering finish. Pure, clean, great complexity, and well-balanced.
Quality: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 5 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to Buy: Winery, $55

2007 Owen Roe Red Willow 1973 Block Cabernet Sauvignon (Red Willow Vineyard, Yakima Valley, Washington): Deep, dark red in color. Gorgeous nose with floral, herbal, and black fruit aromas. Vanilla, toast, nuts, black fruits, spice, nutmeg, and a hint of earth come through on the palate. Very complex and well-balanced with crisp acidity and a long, lingering finish.
Quality: 4.5 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 5 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to Buy: MadWine (Seattle, Washington), $71

2007 Owen Roe Cabernet Franc Rosa Mystica (Red Willow Vineyard, Yakima Valley, Washington): Dark red. Black, blue, and red fruits and slight vegetal notes on both the nose and palate. Medium-bodied with medium tannins. Well-balanced with good complexity.
Quality: 4 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 2 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to Buy: Winery, $42

2007 Adams Bench Red Willow Cabernet Sauvignon (Red Willow Vineyard, Yakima Valley, Washington): Inky purple in color. Nice nose with aromas of raspberry, blackberry, and black cherry. Loads of black fruits and chocolate come through on the palate. Big and bold with a lot of layers. Well-balanced with a long finish.
Quality: 4 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 5 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to Buy: Winery, $48 [Sold out]

Robert Mondavi was a winemaking legend and Napa Valley pioneer. Mondavi played an integral role in putting United States wine on the map worldwide. He founded his namesake winery in 1966, which was the first major winery in the Napa Valley of California after Prohibition. His goal was to produce wines that would stand up against the best wines in the world.

When Mondavi released his Cabernet Sauvignon in the late 1960’s, he really brought attention to the potential of the Napa Valley, particularly for Cabernet. Throughout his life, he was committed to educating people about the importance of food and wine as a part of culture. Robert Mondavi passed away on May 16, 2008, at the age of 94, but his legend and winery live on.

Recently, we had the opportunity to taste the 2007 Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon from the Napa Valley in a blind samples tasting. It is an excellent wine and delivers a terrific bang for your buck as well. For Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, this one is hard to beat at $28 (and often less) per bottle.

2007 Robert Mondavi Winery Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley, California): Deep, dark purplish red in color. Very aromatic with black fruits and smoke on the nose. Black fruits, smoked meats, and licorice come through on the palate. Medium to full-bodied with lively acidity and medium to high tannins. Well-balanced and smooth with a long finish.
Quality: 4 stars (out of 5)
QPR: 5 bangs for your buck (out of 5)
Where to buy: Received as sample, suggested retail $28; Available elsewhere, $19 to $30

The Pines Vineyard, located the The Dalles, Oregon, is home to some of the oldest vines in the Northwest. Their Old Vine Zinfandel vines are over 100 years old. On our trip to the Columbia Gorge earlier this summer, we toured The Pines Vineyard with owner Lonnie Wright.

History
Louis Comini, an Italian stone mason and immigrant, originally planted the Old Vine Zinfandel at The Pines Vineyard in the late 1800’s. When current owner, Lonnie Wright, first came to The Pines Vineyard in 1982, neither he nor the owner at that time knew who had planted the Old Vine Zin. By then, the vineyard had been abandoned for twenty years and was struggling to survive.

The Comini name surfaced years later when a retired fire chief from The Dalles approached Wright and told him that he remembered going into “old man” Comini’s wine cellar with the Comini twins to steal Dago Red when they were teenagers. Knowing that Dago Red is what some people called Zinfandel in the old days, Wright thought he might be close to discovering the story behind the Old Vine Zin. Later, Wright was interviewed by Oregon Agriculture magazine. When he was asked who planted the vineyard, he said he thought a fellow named Comini originally planted it. After the article was published, Wright started getting phone calls from the family of Louis Comini.

As the story goes, Comini came to the United States from Genoa, Italy. He landed in Baltimore and then made his way across the country to San Francisco and then moved north to work on the Cascade Locks in the Columbia Gorge. Toussaint Mesplie, a Frenchman and the first Catholic priest on the east side of the Cascade Mountains, went to Fort Dalles with the soldiers out of Vancouver. At the time, his two brothers were panning for gold in California. Mesplie wrote his brothers to let them know that they were giving away land in Oregon and encouraged them to come up and get some. Theodore Mesplie staked a claim to the land in 1852 that is now The Pines. Toussant Mesplie met Louis Comini and offered him a job to come to Fort Dalles and make headstones for the Catholic cemetery. Through that relationship, Comini ended up planting the vineyard on Theodore Mesplie’s property. Comini made the communion wine for the church. Wright does not know the exact year the Old Vine Zin was planted but does have pictures of it that were taken in 1911.

Theodore Mesplie died in 1916 without a will. His five children divided his property. One of his daughters inherited the part of the property on which the vineyard was planted. Along with a wealthy businessman in Portland, she formed The Pines Corporation around 1930. They sold it to a guy who wanted to turn it into a destination spa, aka “fat farm”. When he had trouble making payments, he partnered with a guy in Salt Lake City who owned fitness clubs and spas all across the country and who eventually bought it outright. Eventually, he decided to sell it. A cherry farmer in The Dalles was in the process of buying it when Lonnie Wright entered the picture.

Wright got his start in viticulture in 1978 when he and several others planted 2,000 acres of grapes for the first vineyards at Columbia Crest in Paterson, Washington. Under the tutelage of Wade Wolfe and Clay Mackey, experts in vineyard management in Washington State, Wright became the area manager for 650 acres of grapes and supervised the first harvest. In 1980, Wright married a girl from Hood River, Oregon, and promised her that they would move to the Gorge in a year after he completed what he considered to be his training in the industry.

Lonnie Wright and his wife Linda moved to The Dalles in 1981. He heard that a cherry farmer was buying an abandoned vineyard in the area and was going to try to bring it back to life. Unannounced, he showed up at 7am the morning work was to start and found the cherry farmer standing out in the field with six women he had hired and a General Viticulture book from UC Davis open to the page on pruning. Wright told him that while he had never brought an abandoned vineyard back to life, he did have vineyard experience and was promptly hired. In 1983, Wright started a vineyard management company called Columbia Country Vineyards. In addition to his work at The Pines, he also plants and manages vineyards for others in the area. About three or four years after he went to work for the cherry farmer, the farmer ran into financial problems, and he had to give The Pines property back to the guy from Salt Lake City. Since that owner did not have any interest in grapes or wine, he asked Wright if he’d be interested in moving onto the property and taking care of it. Wright and his family moved on in 1987, got a twenty-year lease, and started expanding the vineyard.

Old Vine Zinfandel
The first winery to produce Old Vine Zinfandel from The Pines Vineyard was Sineann, a partnership between Peter Rosback and David O’Reilly of Owen Roe. When they first released their Old Vine Zinfandel, most people assumed it was from Washington State since it carried the Columbia Valley appellation on the label. In fact, many retail shops and restaurants put it in their Washington sections. [The first time we had it, earlier this year, we were told by a local shop that it was made from Washington grapes.] Since Wright was leasing the place at the time, he did not really want to draw attention to the place and increase its value because he hoped to be able to buy it someday. In 2002, Wright bought The Pines Vineyard, so now he is more than happy to tell people where those Old Vine Zin vines are located.

One thing that you’ll notice in the pictures is that the trunks of the Old Vine Zin don’t look like gnarly, century-old vines. That’s because they are not. The vineyard froze to the ground in 1991 and 1996. The trunks that are visible now have been there since 1996. However, the roots have been there since the late 1800’s.

Today, Sineann and Wright’s own The Pines 1852 Winery use the fruit from the Old Vine Zinfandel.

Grape Varieties
The Pines Vineyard totals twenty acres. As I previously mentioned, the original eight acres of Old Vine Zinfandel were planted in the late 1800’s. Wright used starts from the Old Vine Zin to plant five more acres of Zinfandel in 1987 and then planted two more acres of Zinfandel in 2002. Wright added Merlot in 1991 and 1993 for a total of three acres. He also planted four acres of Syrah in 1994.

The soils in the vineyard are mostly sandy loam with a little bit of silt loam. The vineyard gets about seventeen inches of rain each year. The elevation at the top of the vineyard is about 650 feet, though it feels much higher when you are up there. Wright believes that one of the things that make the valley where the vineyard is located special is that Mt. Hood sits at the head of the valley and so it gets nice, cool breezes at night. On days when the temperature reaches 94-95, it will quite often go down to 60-62 at night.

The Pines 1852
After years of growing grapes and selling them to others, Wright decided it was time to keep some of that fruit for himself and start his own winery. In 2001, he founded The Pines 1852 Winery. Peter Rosback of Sineann is the winemaker. The Pines 1852 has a tasting room in downtown Hood River, Oregon. Their annual production is 3,500 to 4,000 cases.

Both the vineyard and the winery remain family-owned and operated. Unlike many working farms, the Wrights do offer vineyard tours of The Pines Vineyard. So if you are in the area, I highly encourage you to call ahead and make an appointment. Zinfandel vines, especially century-old vines, are not something you get to see very often in the Northwest.

This week’s Wine Word of the Week is carafe.

Official definition from Ron Herbst and Sharon Tyler Herbst’s The New Wine Lover’s Companion:
Carafe is a simple clear glass (occasionally metal) container with a wide mouth used for serving wine or other beverages. Restaurants often use carafes to serve inexpensive wines. Carafes can also be used to decant older wines that have thrown sediment; however, finer wines are customarily transferred to a more elaborate container, such as a decanter.

Layman’s terms from Kori:
Carafe is a basic glass container used for serving beverages. The same type carafe used for orange juice at breakfast joints is often used to serve house wines at restaurants.

The Wine Lover’s Cookbook: Great Recipes for the Perfect Glass of Wine by Sid Goldstein is not a new book, but it is relatively new to us. I recently found it and our food expert, LaGayle, put her stamp of approval on several of the recipes and pairings in it. That’s good enough for me.

After several introductory chapters on the basics of food and wine pairing, Goldstein dedicates a chapter to each of fourteen wine varietals, lists the different aromas and flavors typical of that wine, suggests foods and ingredients that will best complement it, and discusses the regions that produce the best examples. I liked the format, even though it doesn’t allow the book to cover every single wine varietal.

The only negative from LaGayle’s standpoint is that many of the recipes are fairly lengthy and call for a lot of ingredients, something she tries to avoid in her selections and recommendations. I enjoy seeing pictures of what the meal made from the recipe will look like on a plate, so it was disappointing to me that not many in this book have pictures.

In addition to this book, Sid Goldstein is the co-author of American Game Cooking and From Earth to the Table. In his other life, Goldstein has directed Marketing Communications at Fetzer Vineyards in California.

The Wine Lover’s Cookbook has received a number of rave reviews. In fact, most other reviewers give the book even better marks than I do. If you love wine and food and enjoy cooking, I encourage you to pick up a copy of this book to add to your library.

Have you already read and/or used The Wine Lover’s Cookbook? If so, please leave a comment and let us know what you thought of it.

Cheers!