The Corliss 2007 Red Wine that bears no other name originates in Bordelais grapes largely from their Red Mountain vineyards, and spent 33 months in 75% new barriques, though winemaker Andrew Trio indicates that subsequent vintages have been or will be bottled slightly sooner, to reflect the team’s consensus that “we find we achieve what we need to after two and a half years.” Fresh dark cherry fruit is laced with rose hip and salted caramel on a silken palate with confectionary allusions to pistachio brittle, marzipan, and red licorice gaining prominence in a long finish. For those who like their Cabernet and Company very much on the sweet and polished side, this should prove a winner over at least the next half dozen years. And perhaps some counterpoint and intrigue will emerge over that period.
Michael and Lauri Corliss and their Walla Walla facility exude an aura of earnest perfectionism, a trait which extended among other things to their having made wines for two years before reaching a quality level they thought fit to release under their own label, and even then (in 2008) only after their inaugural 2003s had received two and a half years’ elevage and a nearly equal stay in bottle. “We find that there is a big difference,” notes Michael Corliss, “between (their taste) when we put the wines in bottle and how they evolve over the next two years.” The wines I tasted in July from them and their team of young Australian Andrew Trio; Griffin Frey; and consultant Philippe Melka were never less than polished and intensely flavorful, if perhaps too infrequently more than that. Surface polish, abundant fine tannins, sheer sweetness of fruit, and surfeit of new oak may simply be dominating in some instances over intricacy, subtlety, and personality that could emerge with time – and the Corlisses certainly intend most of their reds not just to withstand, but to reward long cellaring. There are now three Corliss estate vineyards – two of which are in Red Mountain – supplemented by fruit from four sites including Stillwater Creek and Sagemoor’s Bacchus and Dionysus. (The supplier list was larger in the winery’s earliest years, although the first estate vineyard was acquired already in 2002. The Blue Mountain estate vineyard south of Walla Walla principally sources Corliss’s sister project Tranche, whose wines are reviewed separately under that name in the present report.) Virtually all of the Corliss reds are now fermented spontaneously for 3-5 weeks in wooden uprights, with extraction principally via pump-overs, the young wines going to barrel without settling, frequently only after some post-fermentative maceration and subjected to lees-stirring. “2007 had to be one of the most perfect growing seasons” of all time in Washington, opines Michael Corliss of the vintage whose wines he recently released, adding that his volume was up because even with a very rigorous selection process most of the fruit passed muster.
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