2007 Carriage House DuBrul Vineyard

The Cabernet Sauvignon-based Cote Bonneville 2007 DuBrul Vineyard Carriage House – its 24% Merlot, 14% Franc scarcely differing from the blend in other vintages, since this wine represents essentially a row-selection – is one more delicious demonstration that if you can’t afford or locate bottles of this estate’s flagship you can indulge yourself with the high price-quality rapport of their other Bordeaux-inspired blend. Smoky black tea and Latakia tobacco as well as tomato foliage make for a pungent accompaniment to dried and distilled cherry on the nose, then inform a palate of admirable polish, clarity, and vivacity. Brown spices, tea, and persistently pungent herb and tobacco carry into a long and involved finish. But you’ll have to search hard to detect any obvious evidence of the two-thirds new oak in which this aged. Look for a decade of intrigue and delight. Kathy and Hugh Shiels founded Cote Bonneville in 2002, seven years after their predominantly steep and cobbled DuBrul Vineyard produced its first fruit. Wine growers out of love and pride rather than professional need – she was a physical therapist and he continues even after achieving fame in wine to practice as an orthopedic surgeon – their fruit from what was to become the Rattlesnake Hills A.V.A. rocketed to high-regard, reflecting an attention to viticultural detail so intense it spawned the saying I heard more than a couple of times during my recent trip: “If Hugh Shiels thought that licking each stone in his vineyard would improve the quality of his fruit, he’d do it.” The minuscule size of the inaugural release of Cote Bonneville (named for their family’s Romanesque Revival home in Cincinnati, built in 1902 by inventor Napoleon DuBrul) by no means reflected hesitancy or dilettantism, but rather the meticulousness and perfectionism this family had already displayed in their vineyard management. From the beginning, the aim was to make world class wine, and when, after a few years, volumes reached commercial proportions, the Shiels’ flagship bottling raised some hackles by being the first in Washington to retail for three figures – a front-running status that they appear unapologetically aiming to retain. Merely to cite one example of the Shiels’ and vineyard manager Larry Dolan’s viticultural detail-consciousness (and in next year’s report I’ll discuss others), not just individual blocks or vine rows but individual stretches of vine rows are, via a multitude of valves, selectively dry-farmed or permitted occasional slow drip to reflect their specific location, vine origin, and, of course, signs of vigor or stress. After receiving her viticultural degree from Davis, daughter Kathy Shiels took over as winemaker beginning with the 2009 harvest. Fourteen clients are permitted to purchase the three-quarters of DuBrul’s fruit – nearly 75% of which is in Bordelais varieties – not now vinified by the owners. Tel. (509) 840-4596