Raised in 40% new wood and incorporating 12% each Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon, the texturally polished L’Ecole 2009 Merlot Estate Seven Hills Vineyard boasts generously juicy dark cherry and plum fruit allied to game, leather and piquancy of fruit pit, striking a fine balance between richness and brightness, and persisting with mouthwatering savor, if relative simplicity. Based on a very limited experience with some older bottlings, I suspect this will be best enjoyed over the next 3-4 years. (The corresponding generic bottling was relatively tight and tart.) Celebrating three decades this year, L’Ecole 41 is under the direction of Megan and Marty Clubb – founders Jean and Baker Ferguson’s daughter and son-in-law – who met while at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and left consulting and management careers in 1989 to take over the family winery. The Ferguson’s brought prior viticultural experience to their winery, even though it was only the third to open in Walla Walla, and the next generation, in 1993, brought L’Ecole into partnership with Seven Hills Vineyard, even as they became the first winery to crush fruit from Pepper Bridge Vineyard. A recently planted second estate vineyard, Ferguson Ridge, is one of the so-called SeVein properties above Seven Hills. Beyond these sites, L’Ecole taps into many others, most well-known, ranging all across eastern Washington. (L’Ecole’s 2011 whites had only recently been bottled when I tasted the 2010s last July, and I did not have a chance last year to make good on that omission.) Tel. (509) 525-0940