Woodward Canyon Estate Merlot 2018
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Wine
Enthusiast -
Jeb
Dunnuck
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
The wine shows beautifully, with nice rich fruit, balanced acidity, and fine-grained tannins. The full-bodied mouthfeel leads to complex flavors of black olive, and spice. Enticing notes of black cherry, spiced oak, and leather come forth.
Pair this wine with your favorite roasted chicken.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This wine is still settling into its skin. The aromas initially bring notes of freshly mortared green herbs, cherry and raspberry. Silky flavors follow with plenty of tannic heft. The stuffing is all there, but it needs time to come into its own. But when it does? Ooh.
Cellar Selection
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Jeb Dunnuck
Lots of bright cherry and mulberry fruits emerge from the 2018 Merlot Woodward Canyon Estate, which offers more tobacco, earth, new leather, and spice with time in the glass. Medium to full-bodied, lightly textured, and beautifully balanced, with quality tannins, it’s an outstanding Merlot to drink over the coming decade. The wine is 100% Merlot and spent 20 months in 50% new French oak.
The winery has consistently produced premium, age-worthy, award-winning Cabernet Sauvignons and Merlots as well as Chardonnays. From the outset, Rick determined that quality would take precedence over quantity.
Consequently, Woodward Canyon has remained small. Woodward Canyon is located in Lowden in the Walla Walla Valley appellation. The tasting room is a restored 1870's farmhouse.
Woodward Canyon is a founding member of the Walla Walla Valley Wine Alliance and VINEA, the Walla Walla Valley Winegrowers' Sustainable Trust.
With generous fruit and supple tannins, Merlot is made in a range of styles from everyday-drinking to world-renowned and age-worthy. Merlot is the dominant variety in the wines from Bordeaux’s Right Bank regions of St. Emilion and Pomerol, where it is often blended with Cabernet Franc to spectacular result. Merlot also frequently shines on its own, particularly in California’s Napa Valley. Somm Secret—As much as Miles derided the variety in the 2004 film, Sideways, his prized 1961 Château Cheval Blanc is actually a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
Responsible for some of Washington’s most highly acclaimed wines, the Walla Walla Valley has experienced a surge in popularity in recent years and is home to both historic wineries and younger, up-and-coming producers.
The Walla Walla Valley, a Native American name meaning “many waters,” is located in southeastern Washington; part of the appellation actually extends into Oregon. Soils here are well-drained, sandy loess over Missoula Flood deposits and fractured basalt.
It is a region perfectly suited to Rhône-inspired Syrahs, distinguished by savory notes of red berry, black olive, smoke and fresh earth. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot create a range of styles from smooth and supple to robust and well-structured. White varieties are rare but some producers blend Sauvignon Blanc with Sémillon, resulting in a rich and round style, and plantings of Viognier, while minimal, are often quite successful.
Of note within Walla Walla, is one new and very peculiar appellation, called the Rocks District of Milton-Freewater. This is the only AVA in the U.S. whose boundaries are totally defined by the soil type. Soils here look a bit like those in the acclaimed Rhône region of Chateauneuf-du-Pape, but are large, ancient, basalt cobblestones. These stones work in the same way as they do in Chateauneuf, absorbing and then radiating the sun's heat up to enhance the ripening of grape clusters. The Rocks District is within the part of Walla Walla that spills over into Oregon and naturally excels in the production of Rhône varieties like Syrah, as well as the Bordeaux varieties.