At a Weekly wine tasting a few weeks ago, one of the bottles opened was the recently released 2003 chardonnay from John Abbott's
Abeja Winery in Walla Walla. We all expected to like the wine--though Abeja's fairly new, Abbott has been making fine wine for other labels for many years. What we did not expect was to like the wine so much that it virtually erased all the others under consideration that day. The compliments were many and varied, but the one that captured the overall mood was: "If Washington can produce a chardonnay this good, why aren't more winemakers doing it?"
So I called Abbott, and I found out why. "Wines with a lower pH
always seem more balanced and elegant. You tend to have higher acid at ripeness at cooler-climate sites, so we go first to Connor Lee Vineyard on the Wahluke Slope, which averages 10 degrees cooler than Wahluke average, and we pick it early as we can, soon as the greenness goes away, at 3, 3.18 pH.
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Posted on February 16, 2005 04:02 |
Vineyards / Growers
