Wine & Words

If you go to the "Press+Trade" page of Charles Smith's website you're confronted with hip videos of Charles himself. I wasn't impressed - the Nirvana t-shirt, the "shades," the aging hippy long hair, the rock 'n roll allusions. As he takes you through his vineyards, everything is "hot" or "cool." It's a good thing I tasted his wines before I saw the marketing persona.
 
Then I read the reviews. His 2006 Royal City Syrah got 100 Points from Wine Enthusiast magazine and was at the top of the Best Wines of 2009 list (Robert Parker gave it a mere 98 Points). And he was Food & Wine magazine's 2009 Winemaker of the Year. That story lauded the fact that 9 years ago Charles was managing rock bands in Copenhagen, when he heard about the Merlots of Walla Walla, Washington. He rode his Harley Davidson up to that high and dry Pacific Northwest region and decided to teach himself to be a winemaker. Sounds more like an adventurous guy with a vision. Maybe the Charles Smith hype is really "anti hype." He says, dismissively, "Hey, it's just wine. Drink it."
 
As I watched further, I heard Charles say he makes "Wines that taste like the varietal and taste like the place they're from." Well, I can certainly get with that. And I read the website's description of what he calls "The Modernist Project" -- "a response to how people generally consume wine today, that is immediately… as in immediately after being purchased at a market, restaurant or bar, to be drunk straight away. Wine in this category is typically ether simple, or is a wine that would be much better a few years down the road. ‘Modernist Project’ wines are about putting as much into the bottle as possible. The intent is to create wines to be enjoyed now, but with typicity with regards to variety—that is Merlot that tastes like Merlot—and to the vineyard—wine that tastes like where it was grown. The wines are full of flavor, balanced, and true to their place of origin."
 
Having already tasted the two Charles Smith modernist wines we're introducing this week, I thought, "When you get past the aging hipster persona, this guy's on to something."
 
Walla Walla Washington Wines
I couldn't resisit this alliteration. I mean, Walla Walla has always sounded like a made up place to me. A place where an ex-Scandinavian rocker would be right at home living his winemaker fantasty. The Walla Walla River valley has a complex geology of volcanic rocks overburdened by other soils that were washed down by an ancient flood. The area is also very dry. With an average annual rainfall of only 12.5 inches the early Italian immigrants who settled the area thought it was too dry for growing much of anything besides wheat and sweet onions. But, like Italian immigrants everywhere, they had to plant some wine grapes on the side, just for their own consumption.
 
In the 1980's restless winemakers noticed that the Walla Walla region, at latitude 46°, straddles the line between the Burgundy and Bordeaux regions of France. The long hot summer days and short cool nights around latitude 46° produces a perfect balance of sugars and acidity in the grapes. In one of his videos, Charles Smith points out the dry riverbed of volcanic rocks that radiate their heat back in the cold night. And the dry climate allows viticulturists to precisely control the amount of water given the grapes through irrigation. Additionally, this high latitude means that once autumn arrives the weather cools quickly and the hours of daily sunshine diminishes rapidly. As a result, grapes are able to remain on the vine weeks after they have to be harvested in most other regions. This extra "hang time" on the vine allows the flavors within each grape to intensify and gain even more layers of subtlety.
 
We've chosen two of Charles Smith's "Modernist" wines to introduce to Wine & Words.
 
Eve Chardonnay2007 Charles Smith Eve Chardonnay (Columbia Valley, Washington) Regular 16.50, Feature Price $13.20
This is the kind of temptation you can yield to. The first aroma note here, like other Washington state Chardonnays, is bright green apple. The wne that follows that initial temptation is clean, dry and refreshing. The dry minerality reminds me of white Burgundy wines, like Chablis. Yes, it's that good. And like those sophisticated French Chardonnays, this one goes very well with food. Even if you're not usually a Chardonnay drinker, or if you think red wines are better food companions, try this one...with anything. It's packaged in a screw-cap bottle with a plain black and white image and, as Charles Smith would say, "It's ready now. Let's drink it!"
 
Velvet Devil Merlot2008 Charles Smith "The Velvet Devil" Merlot (Columbia Valley, Washington) Regular 16.50, Feature Price $13.20
The first thing that strikes me about this wine is the color. It's an amazing deep reddish purple that I'm tempted to call "wine colored." This is 100% Merlot that brings out the extracted characteristics of the fruit the way the Tobin James "Made in the Shade" Merlot does but without the huge Paso Robles body. Being from a cooler climate, this wine has a lighter body than those California heavies. That makes it an excellent food wine. Like its Chardonnay cousin, I'd serve this one with just about anything, from soup to nuts. Charles Smith calls it "sinfully smooth, so naughty and SO NICE." It makes me willing to forgive Charles his dress code sins.