“This was the best-looking fruit I’d ever seen come in,” says Coleman of Tamarack’s 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon, his seventh vintage, “though only the vines that managed to produce in 2004 despite the frost were able to do so again.” An old block at Bacchus Vineyard with Tamarack since 1999 allegedly played the starring role here, though DuBrul, Tapteil, and Seven Hills have also contributed. There is a lean, clean red meatiness here that I would have picked as being from Syrah, allied to fresh, sappy cassis and cherry, all tinged with salt and iodine for a complex and mouthwatering finish. Even more remarkable is a sense of lift that perfectly complements ethereal suggestions of herb and berry distillates. While I would not want to press my luck if I were lucky enough to own bottles of this beauty, they probably won’t expire over the next couple of years.
At the risk of embarrassment, I must admit that the establishment of veteran Ron Coleman – whose right-hand, winemaker Danny Gordon, has been with him practically since the winery opened in 1998 – was so unfamiliar to me that I had merely requested he send a couple of wines for one of my massive March blind tasting sessions. After tasting nearly two hundred wines solely by number, I was anxious to peel the brown bag back from two standouts, both of which proved to be from Tamarack. It was one of those very rare occasions when I was running ahead of schedule and had more than an hour to kill before my next appointment, which was dinner. “Hey, isn’t this winery one of the many in the old Air Field facilities across the highway?” I asked my fellow-tasters – three critics and distinguished veterans of the Washington scene – assuming, correctly, that one or more of them would have Coleman’s number. He was there, so we postponed dinner and I got a head start enjoying a vast array of wines and lore, returning in July for further tasting, including a vertical of Tamarack’s Cabernet blend. The affable and astute Coleman has cultivated what are clearly close relationships with some of Washington’s finest grape growers and is crafting wines not only stylistically elegant, distinctly delicious and (where single-vineyard, as some are each year) manifestly site-specific, but profoundly cellar-worthy and generously-priced. Customers also benefit from his willingness – even after his wines have typically enjoyed 22 months’ elevage – to give them a year or more in bottle prior to release. Speaking of barrel time, Coleman’s wines experience as much as 75% new oak for their first year, yet it never stands out as such, a phenomenon he suggests might be attributable not only to his choice of coopers (which I, too, approve, though I won’t name names), but also to his proclivity – after fermentation in small tanks with extraction solely via a sparing regimen of punch-downs – to press-off at anywhere from 2-8% sugar, letting his young wines go to barrel without settling to finish their primary fermentation. Finished alcohol in virtually all of the wines I tasted ranged from 14.2-14.6%.
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