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Columbia Crest’s H3 Cabernet has been garnering a lot of attention as a good Q.P.R. (Quality to price ratio) wine so I decided to give it a whirl and see what all the hype was about. I’ve seen this bottle retail from $11 up to $15 so it really does fall into that mainstream pricing that many folks are comfortable paying for. Columbia Crest has a history of releasing excellent wines for the money – does this one hold up?

Technical Details:

• Grapes were crushed at 20% whole-berry to retain fruit quality.
• Fermentation lasted 7-14 days on the skins to extract optimum fruit and structural components.
• Various yeasts were used to maintain fruit flavors and complexity.
• Malolactic fermentation occurred in stainless steel tanks and oak barrels.
• Blending occurred shortly after malolactic fermentation.
• The wine was barrel aged in 40% new American and French oak, and 60% older oak for 14-18 months.
• Total acidity: 0.58 g/100ml
• pH: 3.75
• Alcohol: 14.3%
• Price: $15

Nose: Chocolate, plums and cherries for days with allspice, clove and hints of tobacco round things out. Additionally, I also pick up hints of some baseball glove at the end.

Taste: Excellent fruit-forward action with the cherries, blackberries and plums which open up to some good mid-palate spice with the cloves and some nice rose petal flavors on the back-end. The finish lingers on quite nicely and overall I feel this wine is an excellent QPR bottle.

Overall Summary:
Considering the price of this wine, I’m going to have to give it high marks – it has everything I’m looking for in a well-priced wine value. Excellent fruit, decent complexity and a long finish – why other wineries who compete in this price range can’t figure that out is beyond me. I’ve got to hand it to Ray Einberger and his team up there at Columbia-Crest – they sure know how to churn out the good vino and keep the prices down.

Would pair well with:
Grilled Steaks
Pot Roast
Cedar Plank Salmon
Salmon stuff with crab-meat in a green peppercorn sauce
Mixed herb-green salad with feta cheese, toasted pecans and dried cherries

W.E.P. Scale Rating: 100%

The winery with a name that sounds more like that of a law office is on deck today and they’re a pretty new winery out in Walla Walla but are one of the fortunate ones which own its own vineyards.

I got the chance to interview its winemaker, Michael Berghan, the other day at the Taste WA event and he’s a very likable individual. He’s full of passion, has a good pedigree of winemaking and vineyard management skills from his workings in the Napa-region so, naturally, I was looking forward to getting some quality time with his latest wines.

2005 Stateline Red – Retail $22
This table wine is a blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon and weighs in at a 13.8% alcohol level which is about where I like to see them. This wine is barreled 100% neutral oak which consisted of a mix of American, Hungarian and French. This is a very young wine which really would do well to decant for at least an hour or two, if not longer.

Smell: Typical berry component – cherries, raspberries and slight hints of toasty vanilla, petrol.
Hints of perfume counter action – lavender and white pepper – a little dentist laughing gas mask action and bits of medicine cabinet – like of eucalyptus.

Taste: Floods the front palate with fresh berries – a bit hot on the mid palate with subtleties of vanilla…some blackberry on the finish. It doesn’t linger quite as long as I’d like to see – a bit too short for me, as I’m a huge fan of super-long finishes.

Overall Impressions of the 2005 Stateline Red:
It’s a decent table wine and pairs very well with a variety of foods. Mike does a good job here of keeping balance of fruit, oak but the finish is a bit shorter than other wines I’ve had for a similar pricepoint.

Food recommendations for the Stateline include:
- Steak
- Buffalo
- Duck
- Lamb
- Oven-roasted root vegetables with rosemary

2005 Merlot – Retail $26
A near identical blend as the Stateline Red, this Merlot is 86% and 14% Cabernet Sauvignon, however, Michael uses a different barrel program of mostly (60%) new oak (40% Hungarian and 60% French) whilst the Stateline is barreled in neutral oak.

Like the Stateline Red, this Merlot is very young and either needs to lie down for a few more years or needs a serious decant-job – I’d go four hours on it easy.

Smell: Huge dark cherry and blackberry and plum component on the nose – some big league chew. Black peppercorn – slight hint of carpet shampoo.

Taste:  Good mouth-feel, pretty good balance of fruit and oak – the fruit does a good job of keeping the oak tamed and the finish is nice and long. Good bits of chocolate coming thru as well.

Overall impressions of the 2005 Merlot:
The merlot would be my first pick as I feel it’s doing a better job of delivering a good experience for the price-point. Outside of the fact that it has more layers of flavors going on in, it should also have a really good cellaring potential. To me, this merlot is sort of like The Eagles band – after Hell Freezes Over – it keeps the goodness of their original sound, yet does a great job of appealing to a newer, younger audience.

Food recommendations for the Merlot:
- Lamb w/ a Rosemary-mint glaze
- Duck
- Slow-cooked pot-roast
- Oven-roasted root vegetables with rosemary

Overall Summary:
Both of these wines are contenders in their respective price ranges and do a good job of balancing the fruit – There are other wines in these price categories which may appeal to other people who enjoy getting their socks knocked off with an over-abundance of oak or fruit, these wines – especially the merlot – are not that style at all. In fact, they almost have an old-world kind of style here and stay very focused.

I’d really like to see where these wines are at in 3-7 years but like all to many wineries now-days, it seems like they release stuff still on the young side as holding bottles doesn’t allow the revenue’s to come in. I get it. It’s a tough battle.

GH has a good, solid effort with both of these wines and I’d highly encourage you to seek them out and try them yourself. I feel they’re pretty well priced – not too expensive, yet probably won’t become a daily-drinker for some folks. Regardless, seek them out and try them and let me know what you think or better yet, post your thoughts in our forums.

Before you send me an email, I know and I get it – I know you have an automatic bias against anything that’s wine which comes in a box. That’s okay – embrace it even. I, however, am trying to get rid of stereotypes for wine and in doing so am forced to “take one for the team” sometimes and try things which may be outside of the realm of what I’d consider to be “normal”.

When I first mentioned to some colleagues that I was getting a boxed wine in to review – they had the very typical auto-response of “no-way dude” and “wow, that’s messed up”. Too many companies have given boxed wine a very bad rep due to their use of garbage grapes and cheap winemaking practices which have kept it squarely in the el-cheap’o section at your local grocery store.

Based in Kennewick Washington, Powers Winery has been producing quality wines for well over 20 years now and has a wide array of products, including this somewhat newer release of a boxed Cabernet Sauvignon.

Using the pouch-method of wine storage has advantages.  The more-air-tight nature of the pouch means wine may last weeks, instead of days, unlike it’s bottle-and-cork brethren.

On the flip-side, I don’t think we’ll ever see premium wines put in them because they do not allow for a graceful aging process – they are, by their design, meant for a pop-and-pour situation and do lend themselves for being a good source for wine if you’re doing a large party.

The 2006 Powers Cab uses grapes sourced from 55% Goose Ridge Vineyards, 20% Coyote Vineyard, 10% Milbrant Vineyards, 5% Pleasant Vineyards – all of which are 100% cabernet grapes.

Color: The color is on-point for a cab with its deep-rooted purple-red notes.

Smell: Smells exactly like “communion juice” from church but coupled with a hint of vanilla, 1-week old raspberries and some decent plum component.

Taste: No surprise here, it tastes exactly like it smells – a little fake in my opinion because of the overwhelming Welch’s action. Lots of fruit-forward but starts falling off rather quick as soon as it hits the mid palate. It does taste to me like it was aged in older oak as there’s no real big toastiness coming through for me.

As a side note, when I first opened it up, it really seemed to taste a bit like a plastic liner – it could be subconscious, however, that taste went away after several hours.

That said, it’s not an absolute horrible wine – I could easily see this being setup for a bunch of party guests who “think they’re wine-drinkers” but you really know they’re not – you know, the kind whom thinks Franzia and Gallo jugs are the bomb?

Summary: This wine is going to appeal to those whom want some cheap booze that’ll last them for weeks after opening so they can hit it daily to get their buzz on.

This could be a gateway product to help lure them over to the big-guns, but for me, I’d have to give it a pass. For $22 I’d rather spend a few bucks more and pick up the Powers Reserve Cab which I tasted last month – that is a really good bottle of wine.

This is my opinion but you should try it if you get the chance and ultimately embrace your own palate.