The Wine Knows

The Wine Press Northwest crew spent much of Thursday at the Northwest's largest winery, Columbia Crest in Paterson, Wash. While I came out of the day with a reporter's notepad full of blog-worthy items, the most immediate was this: Crest plans to unveil a new tier this fall and name it after the appellation it's in, the Horse Heaven Hills.

I heard it called a couple of different names, including "H3" and "Triple H" and it should be around by middle of harvest this year. It will fit in the $10 range, I understand, which is between the wine giant's Two Vines and Grand Estates tiers.

Additionally, we tasted the new reserve wines (none of which have been released), including the Reserve Chardonnay, which carries the Horse Heaven Hills appellation name on the label. We also tasted two vineyard-designated wines - both firsts for Crest - one a Zin and the other a Cab Franc.

Many folks tend to look down their noses at Columbia Crest because the wines are ubiquitous. Yet the quality-to-price ratio is difficult to beat. And the innovation is omnipresent. Winemaker Ray Einberger didn't quit his gig at Opus One simply to make great $5 wines. He arrived more than a decade ago because he recognized Washington as the frontier of New World winemaking - and he wanted a challenge. Whenever I meet with Ray, he stresses his "winery within a winery" mantra. And he's dead serious. Whether it's the hundreds of thousands of bottles of Grand Estates Chardonnay or the few hundred bottles of vineyard-designated wines, quality and innovation are front and center.

From the outside, it has to seem unimaginable how Columbia Crest can produce such consistently good to great wine. But once you pull back the curtain and see how Einberger and his team work, it's difficult to imagine that they would fail.