The Carter Cellars 2007 Solesce is just over half Cabernet Sauvignon; a third Merlot; and includes small amounts of Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot. A rather high-volatile nose evokes cherry candy, kirsch, creme de cassis, tar, chocolate and molasses, all of which reprise along with bittersweet notes of pecan on a broad, full, flatteringly polished palate. This manages to evoke some juiciness even after 30 months in 55% new barrels, although its impressively persistent finish has a bitter and dry edge. (It happens, incidentally, to be among the few wines I tasted twice for this report, once blind.) It’s hard to extrapolate from a 1998 rendition that Carter let me taste alongside and which displayed interesting if evolved aromas and flavors but significantly more bitterness and drying. I suspect this 2007 will be best drunk within 3-5 years.
Oregon- and California-trained Brian Carter has been a prominent fixture of the Washington wine landscape for more than three decades, for much of which he was winemaker for and partner in Washington Hills Cellars (including its Apex and Bridgman brands) and for all of which he has been active as a consultant and ambassador “abroad” (in which capacities I have myself known him for nearly 20 years). Carter has been vinifying and bottling wine under his own name since 1997 (the 2007 Solesce reviewed in this issue thus marking the beginning of that signature cuvee’s second decade). Sweet fruit and toasty oak (despite generally modest percentages of new wood) but also frequently herbaceous, gum-numbing and bitter notes characterize the reds that dominate Carter’s production – most of them fancifully named in a nod to their Old World inspirations – from which I would love to experience a bit greater sense of clarity, levity, energy, and retention of primary fresh fruit juiciness. “It’s taken me a while to unlearn Davis training,” Carter told me at one point with a laugh. “They made me swear never to engage in spontaneous fermentation” but recently he’s done just that. So his being viewed as an elder statesman clearly isn’t going to preclude Carter’s continuing evolution as a winemaker.
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