Gregutt's Top 100 state wines for 2007
18. Syncline 2005 Cuvée Elena Red Wine ($35)
Wine Adviser/Paul Gregutt The Seattle Times
Once again, in the retrospective spirit of the season, I offer a highly personal list of the year's Top 100 Washington wines.
There are now more than 530 bonded wineries in the state. If they average just 10 wines annually (some less, some more) that's more than 5,000 wines. Do I taste them all? In my dreams! But I do taste a significant percentage, and that, along with frequent visits to wineries and vineyards, numerous conversations and tastings with the winemakers themselves, and a depth of reference tastings reaching back a quarter-century, all enter into this ranking.
Many of the elite Washington wineries sell most of their wines to mailing-list customers, select restaurants and wine shops. It is important to recognize them — even if they are expensive and rare — because these are building a quality reputation for Washington state, which I believe to be the most important emerging wine region in the New World.
Included also are some widely available, inexpensive wines — those which offer exceptional flavor and value. These everyday bottles evangelize for the affordability of Washington wines. I try to list just one wine per winery, although many of these producers make a full lineup of outstanding wines. My aim is to be inclusive. Even so, barely 20 percent of the wineries in the state make the list. The competition, needless to say, gets tougher every year.
This ranking is not done strictly by the numbers, although these are all wines that score very well on the 100-point scale. I believe that consistency year-to-year, overall style and quality and relative value (to comparable wines) are equally important guidelines.
Paul Gregutt is the author of "Northwest Wines."
His column appears weekly in the Wine section.
He can be reached by e-mail at wine@seattletimes.com.