Welcome to the weekend!  I’m sure glad it’s here and I hope that you all are having a great Saturday thus far.  I tasted a viognier last night, so I thought I’d start off the day with a few notes on viognier…

 Viognier is a white wine grape that when vinified just right can produce excellent wines with great aromatics.  Some of the best viognier in the world comes from the Northern Rhone region inFrance, especially the appellations of Condrieu and Chateau Grillet.  In the Rhone appellation of Cote Rotie,  some syrah vineyards are interplanted with small amounts of viognier, which produces some amazing wines.  In the United States most viognier acreage can be found in California,  and Washington State currently has close to 400 acres of viognier planted.

Last night I tried a Washington State Viognier, a 2008 made by Zefina.  Zefina is an estate winery in the Horse Heaven Hills AVA, which as an AVA has a good reputation for excellent fruit and a lot of good wines are produced there.  This viognier definitely had some nice aromatics, as I could get scents of ripe apple and pear on the nose, as well as on the palate. Unfortunately it seemed that the wine was just a little overpowering with oak.  I like a little oak in my white wines, and even a touch on viognier is ok, but this seemed to have just a little too much, enough to overwhelm the fruity aromas that the wine was trying to display.  The alcohol on this vintage came in at 14.3%, which is quite high in my opinion, and there was no problem detecting it  as the finish was a bit too hot, and was also a contributing factor in inhibiting some of the aromas that were present in the wine.  There are definitely many people out there that like a lot of oak and high alcohol in their wine.  But for me I just think that a little less oak can go a long way.  However I’ll be sure to try Zefina again in the future to see how the next vintage fairs to my taste, sometimes it’s all about the year!

In other recent developments…

The English are not well known for their wine making, but recently English sparking wine (yes, that’s grown and made in England) seems to be quite the poplar drink in the UK at the moment.

There are quite a few biodynamic and organic vineyards around the world.  Here is a video of biodynamic viticulture in action in Spain.

That’s all for now, have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Seth