Whether the blends are Bordeaux, Rhône-style, or something completely unique, Washington is serving notice that its red wines made from a mix of grapes are world-class. This week we talk to Wine Enthusiast Contributing Editor Sean Sullivan and get to know bottles from three unique regions, Red Mountain, Horse Heaven Hills, and Walla Walla Valley, and how vineyard site impacts what ends up in your glass. 

Wines Discussed:

@5:25 Underground Wine Project 2015 Idle Hands Red (Red Mountain)

@12:11 Buty 2014 Columbia Rediviva Phinny Hill Vineyard Red (Horse Heaven Hills)

@16:37 La Rata 2014 Red (Walla Walla Valley (WA))

Transcript:

Jameson Fink: Welcome to Wine Enthusiast's "What We're Tasting" podcast. I'm your host, Jameson Fink. Join me as we discuss three fantastic wines and why each one belongs in your glass. This episode, we're looking at red blends from Washington state with Sean Sullivan, Wine Enthusiast contributing editor who covers and reviews wines from the region.

"What We're Tasting" is sponsored by Vivino. With the largest online inventory, Vivino finds the right wine every time, including wines from my dear home state for a decade of Washington. Download Vivino to discover and buy your favorites. Stock up at vivino.com/wineenthusiast.

One of the conversations we always have about a wine region or a state is having a signature grape, does it have to have a signature grape. Definitely with Washington, what's really interesting about that is you could probably say Merlot, you could say Cabernet, perhaps even Syrah. I think what's interesting about Washington, besides its diversity in grapes, is its red blends. For me, that's where a lot of excitement is so I'm excited to speak with you about this, Sean. Welcome to the show.

Sean Sullivan: Thank you very much for having me.

Jameson Fink: With red blends, I think ... Also, I should mention that you wrote a really interesting article for winemag.com about wine blending and red grapes. If you go to winemag.com and search for wine blending, it will come up. I was thinking about Bordeaux-style blends, your Cabernet-Merlot, Cabernet-Franc, et cetera, based blends. Rhone blends, which are your Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre, and a few other suspects might be involved in that, too. Sean, is Rhone ... Are the Rhone blends, the red blends, is that really where a lot of kind of the excitement and really interesting things are being done in Washington?

Sean Sullivan: Yeah. I think that in terms of ... Bordeaux-style blends have really been done for quite some time in Washington now. It's really only more recently ... If you look at it, Syrah has really only been in the state ... It was first planted in 1986 and the plantings have been growing ever since, so it's a reasonably short history. It's really only much more recent that we've started to see an increasing number of wines using Grenache and using Mourvedre and some of the other varieties, as well, in Rhone blends. Definitely, we see a lot of those, as well some very exciting wines being made in that category, but we see people blending with pretty much everything under the sun in the state. We have over 70 different grape varieties planted here and people are experimenting with a lot of different things and they're trying to blend with a lot of different things and seeing what they find.

Jameson Fink: Do you think, just because I think Syrah has been such a rising star, that that's kind of ... Obviously, some of these blends are Grenache-heavy or possibly Syrah-heavy or another grape, but it seems like, with sort of the ascending stardom of Syrah, where it has that kind of savory Old World notes and some good acid and some of that kind of New World lift and power, is that kind of playing a part in the popularity of Rhone-style blends?

Sean Sullivan: Not just in Rhone-style blends. Even in Bordeaux-style blends, we see some wineries blending in sometimes a little bit of Syrah, sometimes a lot of Syrah, which you could say is that still a Bordeaux-style blend or not. I think one of the things you get with Syrah, in addition to the things you said, is that you get that nice plush richness of fruit flavor that a lot of consumers find very, very appealing. I think we see Syrah being used in a variety of different types of blends in addition to the Rhone-style blends.

Jameson Fink: I kind of think of ... This is something just when I first came to Washington in 2004, 2005, that I found interesting, and I really hadn't seen it anywhere else, is it seems like there's a lot of Syrah-Cabernet blends that kind of ... A little bit of Syrah, a little it of a Cabernet, is that kind of a signature Washington blend? It seems really interesting.

Sean Sullivan: Yeah, it's definitely something that you see a lot of in the state and people have been doing at least going back to the early 2000s, if not earlier. There are two ... Right, you see it a little bit elsewhere in the world, such as Australia. You see those types of blends, but it's definitely something that we see a good bit of here in Washington and something that I think can be done very, very well in Washington. It's a good marriage of the two varieties.

Jameson Fink: Yeah. You're not sort of ... That's one of the nice things about a fairly young wine region is you're not kind of bound by tradition, like, "Okay, we can either make a Bordeaux-style blend or we have to make a Rhone-style blend." It's like, "Hey, let's take a little bit from Column A and Column B."

Sean Sullivan: Well, I was told a great story by Steve Griessel at Betz Family Winery where he was saying that he had a winemaker in from Bordeaux, from a fairly well-regarded winery. They were working with a series of barrel samples and he said the first thing the Bordeaux winemaker did was take some Syrah and try blending it into the Bordeaux blends and kind of seeing what that looked like. It's something that I think a lot of people are experimenting with. As you said here, it's early days and very much the Wild West, and so people are trying different things and trying to see what works. It leads to a lot of excitement and a lot of interesting wines being made.

Jameson Fink: Yeah. Well, let's talk about one of those interesting wines. The first one I wanted to talk about was the Underground Wine Project 2015 Idle Hands red from Red Mountain, 90 points. When we were talking about this earlier, that ... It's 90% Syrah, 10% Cabernet, so it really could be labeled as Syrah.

Sean Sullivan: Correct, could be labeled as Syrah. They actually make ... Underground Wine Project makes another wine that's the flip of these wines called the Devil's Playground that's 90% Syrah ... Excuse me, 90% Cabernet and 10% Syrah, as well. Yes, this wine could be ... To be a varietally labeled wine, it needs to be at least 75% of this variety. At 90% for this particular wine, it's well above that but they're labeling it as a red blend. I think partly in doing so, it gives them the flexibility to change that blend over time if they wish, and partly red blends are just a very, very hot category now and have been for the past few years.

Jameson Fink: Yeah. I picked ... That was something I wanted to talk about, just because a lot of ... We might be drinking a lot more blends than we even know, just because any bottle of Cabernet or a single variety grape, whether red or white, it can have a certain percentage of other grapes in it. I think that is kind of an interesting development. A lot of people might not know that when they buy a Syrah. They're like, "Okay, it's a Syrah," but you know what? It might have 10% Cab, it might have 15%. I think that's kind of an interesting thing for people to kind of dig deeper in if you're ... Those lovely PDF tech sheets with all the wine data on them, it's pretty interesting when you sort of dig down a little and get the blend.

Sean Sullivan: Yeah, absolutely. I think most wines are blends of some type. Either they're blends of different barrels, they're blends of different varieties, they're blends of different vineyards, they're blends of different appellations, and so it can be very interesting to look down in that and say, "Okay, what is the 5% of this? What does it bring to the wine? Why did the winemaker add it?" Sometimes, you can try to figure that out and try to taste that in the wines, and sometimes it's much more subtle and it can be hard to do. It's definitely interesting to think about.

Jameson Fink: It's like all the wine world is a blend.

Sean Sullivan: All the wine world is a blend. Exactly.

Jameson Fink: Actually, that ... When you said a little, kind of detecting those smaller percentages, I thought it was really interesting, just going back to your article about wine blending when you talked to James from Syncline about one of his blends has 2% of something in it. A lot of people would be like, "2%? What the hell is that going to do? That's not going to contribute anything," but he was ... He spoke very strongly about, "Yeah, that's something ... When it's there, you can taste it and, when it's not there, it's a different wine."

Sean Sullivan: Yeah, absolutely. Another part of that conversation with James which didn't make it into the article, he was also talking about sparkling wines. He was talking about the dosage or adding of sugar to those wines, as well, and he