Last week I talked about the tendency of some Washington winemakers to overemphasize the fruit component of their wines, making them more difficult to pair with food. Then I decided to go on a self-imposed mission to find a few wines that buck the trend; a research project of sorts that I\u2019d highly recommend to anyone.<\/p>\n
For white wine lovers I came across the Willow Crest Winery 2005 Viognier<\/strong> (about $12). This Yakima Valley wine has a gentle floral aroma, restrained fruit flavors that lean towards more of an apple\/citrus component and what I felt was a fairly high level of acidity. Because of this, the wine should pair beautifully with foods such as pasta or poultry prepared with heavy cream sauces.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re unable to find Willow Crest wines locally, you can always order them online at www.willowcrestwinery.com.<\/p>\n A terrific food-friendly red wine is the Lost River Winery 2004 Cedarosa <\/strong>(about $26), a blend of 55 percent merlot and 45 cabernet franc. Cabernet franc can sometimes taste a bit vegetal, but there\u2019s no hint of that in this wine.<\/p>\n It has a lovely nose of fresh berries, mild cherry and red currant flavors, good acidity and a long finish that make it a natural to pair with lamb, pork, or even barbeque chicken. This is another fine effort from the Winthrop winery that continues to broaden its spectrum of wines with good results. <\/p>\n Production of Cedarosa is microscopic \u2013 less than 100 cases were made \u2013 but it\u2019s available in Bellingham at Gateway Wines and The Vines wine shop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week I talked about the tendency of some Washington winemakers to overemphasize the fruit component of their wines, making them more difficult to pair with food. Then I decided to go on a self-imposed mission to find a few wines that buck the trend; a research project of sorts that I\u2019d highly recommend to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-washington-wines","category-from-the-bellingham-herald"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danthewineguy.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}