Wine Review - Wind River Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon

In an attempt to review at least one wine from each AVA in Washington state, I broke a personal rule: I would try to review as many different types of wines before I repeated. Then it dawned on me: Why shouldn't I review two of the same types of wines, but from different areas? Character is character, and each is unto its own.

Also, trying to find wine from the Horse Heaven Hills AVA for the particular meal I wanted to make proved to be tricky.

Horse Heaven Hills is a new AVA, established in 2005. It is bordered by the Yakima Valley AVA to the north, and the Columbia River to the south provides moderate temperatures. The steep, silty loam hillsides provide good drainage, and a wide elevation range of 200-1800 feet make it possible to grow a wide variety of grapes there under varying conditions.

The meal I prepared was the Chicken Marsala that I postponed in favor of pizza in my previous review. It really wasn't as time consuming as I had remembered, although getting the timing of the sauce down with the rest of the meal is pretty integral. My sauce had to wait, and got a little reduced. That's why I'm learning to be a wine maker and not a chef.

The wine:

2003 Wind River Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon,
Horse Heaven Hills, WA
Alcohol: 13.5%
Retail (approx): $21.98

Cabernet Sauvignon is one of, if not the, most popular red table wine grapes, most likely because of its versatility. This vintage was a nice brick red color, and had a sweet berry aroma ("jammy" was how it was described on the label, and I would agree with that) that suggested a full body. The flavor was indeed jammy, and the wine was indeed full bodied and quite nicely balanced, and not overpoweringly sweet.

And boy did it ever love our Chicken Marsala. The chicken really seemed to tame the wine, creating a fantastic balance: Like anything done well, you didn't notice the components as much as you did the sum, and the wine made me look better by improving the flavor of the chicken. A true compliment, these two.

Our only side dish was a heaping helping of asparagus topped with a little olive oil, Parmesan cheese, and a salt/mixed spice combination. The wine took to the olive oil just like it did the Marsala sauce; versatile, this wine. A lot of red wines wear out their welcome with me after a glass or two, but this one would be welcome for two glasses and beyond.

This Cabernet Sauvignon lived up to its "King of the Grapes" claim, and as Cab Sauv also ages well, I was tempted to head back to the wine store and grab another bottle for "the cellar". As a testament to the Horse Heaven Hills AVA, this wine rated even higher with my wife and I than the Columbia Signature Series reviewed below, and was $15.00 less to boot. Highly recommended!

4.8/5