Pacific NW 06/10/2007 | Tuscan Dreams | Seattle Times Newspaper

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Tuscan Dreams

On Red Mountain, Col Solare is reaching for the stars

ANDY SAWYER / YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

At opening ceremonies for the new Col Solare winery in Benton City this past April, guests sample and schmooze in the tasting room.

What to expect from the next releases

The next vintage of Col Solare, 2004, will be released in July. It may well be the best ever. Tasted right after bottling, the classy blend (80 percent cabernet sauvignon, 17 percent merlot and a splash each of cabernet franc and petit verdot) is a chewy, muscular wine, dense with plummy fruit and layered with flavors of earth, soy and black tea.

A preview taste of the 2005 Col Solare was equally exciting. In this exceptional year, 20 percent of the fruit was sourced from Red Mountain. The young wine, still more than a year away from release, is rich, ripe, smooth and supple, and packed with sweet berry jam flavors.

To contact the winery, call 800-297-2561 or e-mail to info@colsolare.com. The address is: Col Solare Red Mountain Winery and Estate Vineyard, 50207 Antinori Road, Benton City, WA 99320. Check out the Web site at www.colsolare.com. Visitors are welcome individually and in small groups by appointment only.

Eastern Washington is awash in Tuscan villas these days, as any wine tourist will attest. It seems as if anyone with a vineyard and a contractor wants to build a winery that lets them pretend they're living just outside of Radda or Greve. Isn't it a bit odd, then, that the winery most entitled to Tuscan villa status has opted for something far more contemporary, graceful and compelling?

Col Solare officially opened in April on a sunny, windy, portentous afternoon. Perched high up the gentle slopes of Red Mountain, this state's smallest (but in terms of clout, biggest) designated wine region, Col Solare represents the fulfillment of a dream project begun in the mid-1990s.

Ste. Michelle Wine Estates and the Antinori family of Tuscany — whose winemaking history goes back to the 1300s — began making a super premium Washington wine called Col Solare in 1995. Apart from the marquee star-power of Marchese Piero Antinori, and the obvious credibility he brought to Washington state wine, the project seemed to be a bit directionless.

The wines were good, the winemaking skills of Antinori's chief enologist, Renzo Cotarella, were certainly valuable, and the cabernet-based blend seemed to be an attempt to craft a Washington version of a super-Tuscan red, whatever that might be. But it wasn't until another decade had passed that the Col Solare partnership took the definitive step that will elevate it to star status.

It began with a shovelful of dirt. On July 15, 2005, Chief Executive Officer Ted Baseler and Marchese Antinori stood atop Red Mountain on a bare patch of land that had never, to anyone's knowledge, grown anything outside of sagebrush and cheat grass. They dug into the hard ground and turned over a bit of dry earth. And with that, Col Solare became the cornerstone of what will be a dramatic expansion of Red Mountain vineyards, wineries and tourist-related amenities.

What to expect from the next releases

Great wines require great vineyards. The most significant expression of a great vineyard, it can be argued, is when a single wine is blended from its grapes. With that shovel of earth, the Col Solare partners made a commitment, not only to building a dedicated winery and planting an estate vineyard, but to producing the single best wine possible from those estate-grown grapes.

The winery was up and running for the 2006 crush, barely 14 months later. At the official opening in April, planting of the 28-acre vineyard was complete, the 2005 and 2006 wines were resting in barrels, the expansive tasting room (open by appointment only) was fully functional, and the courtyard was packed with growers, winemakers, wine buyers and sellers, and media flown in from around the country.

"In Italy we are used to slower action," noted Antinori. "We were amazed!"

If I have been overly critical of Col Solare in the past, perhaps it is because my own expectations for this project were set so high. But as Antinori explained the process, it became clear that my impatience did not do justice to the care and methodical exploration of vineyard sites that led the partners ultimately to the top of Red Mountain. (Perhaps that is why I have no family winery whose roots can be traced back seven centuries!)

"It has been a very constructive 12 years," Antinori continued. "We have tried in several areas of Washington to vinify, to experiment. At the end we thought Red Mountain was exactly what we had in mind for our Col Solare wine. We have found this small paradise, to make a wine that is concentrated, with intensity, elegance and finesse."

Ste. Michelle's Baseler, expanding on the theme, predicted that in the next five to 10 years Red Mountain will become the home to many new wineries, along with restaurants, walking trails and lodging. "This is only the beginning," he said. "We needed our own home and vineyard. Our plan is to become a one-wine, estate-grown, Red Mountain AVA wine." Col Solare, which translates as "shining hill," is positioned to become the poster child for that transformation.

Paul Gregutt writes the Wednesday wine column for The Seattle Times and covers Northwest wine for the Wine Enthusiast magazine. Write to him at wine@paulgregutt.com. Andy Sawyer is a photographer for the Yakima Herald-Republic.

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