2006 Chateau Col Solare Red

The 2006 Col Solare – first in its series to be vinified and aged at the new Red Mountain facilities – demonstrates that the sort of wine envisioned and executed by the team here has significant aging potential even in a difficult vintage (in this instance, one in which heat caused the vines to repeatedly shut down). This is another vintage in which Syrah – as well as Petit Verdot – were added to the blend to supply body. Mint, smoky black tea, and a suggestion of charred wood rise from the glass, then join tobacco on an oxidatively developed but still juicy palate. There is some drying to the finish – attributable, I strongly suspect, to residual wood tannins. At the time, though, this bottling was aged entirely in new oak (25% American). But there is also a subtle, saliva-encouraging salinity that nicely fits the savory, low key flavors of a sustained finish. While the Antinori family, their enologist Renzo Cotarella (who visits regularly) and their partners at Ste. Michelle might have initially envisioned their mostly gently sloping, 30-acre Red Mountain vineyard as incorporating some Sangiovese, 18 years after the first Col Solare release – and following many years of reliance on purchased fruit before ever planting a significant share of their own property – the estate focus has ended up being on Bordelais cepages (right down to Carmenere, though winemaker Marcus Notaro notes that its few rows “are more for landscaping, at least for now”) and to a lesser extent Syrah. This is all in keeping with the varieties that have by now become the mainstays of the Red Mountain A.V.A. which Col Solare bottlings, as they become more and more reliant on estate fruit, will probably begin to advertise on their labels. For now, there can be as many as a dozen different vineyard sources reflected in a given bottling. Notaro – who benefits from a superbly equipped facility – can keep all of the Col Solare vineyards under a watchful gaze from that vantage point, and in conversation as well as in the glass, it’s clear that’s not all he’s watching carefully. Among his particular concerns are managing tannins through multiple methods and vessels for fermentative extraction, whose regimen changes from lot to lot not to mention with cepage and vintage. These wines are generally assembled very early on in their elevage, as much as a full year before bottling, though there may be some later fine-tuning. Cotarella says he wants them to be “ageless,” but it’s clear from the extent to which I was permitted to explore them vertically that the team here has a long way to go yet – partly in fine-tuning their approach; though, to be sure, partly in simply patiently waiting to observe its effects on aging – in demonstrating such potential. I was privileged to taste a range of 2011 barrel samples by cepage that showed encouraging, sappy promise and in some instances early finesse – particularly true of Cabernet Franc, a grape that Notaro expects will play an increasing role in future editions of the Col Solare grand vin. Tel. (509) 588-6806