From a highly-reputed, sandy site on the Wahluke Slope, Foster’s 2010 Chardonnay Conner Lee Vineyard – like his white blend from Bordeaux cepages – began life in old barriques and then moved to concrete tank. A savory suggestion of salted brown butter adds saliva-inducement to what is, for now at least, a slightly awkward juxtaposition of fresh lemon and apple with Cream of Wheat. Tart and bitter hints of apple skin and pip along with lemon zest extend the finish of an intriguing wine that should merit following for at least 2-3 years.
Buty is the project, begun in 2000, of Zelma Long protegee and veteran Washington winemaker Caleb Foster with his wife Nina Buty Foster. While their only public facility is located in Walla Walla and they recently bottled the first wine from their estate on the famously cobbled nearby soils of Milton-Freewater (a project on which Foster’s viticultural go-to guy, Phil Freese, consulted), most of their fruit is sourced from farther west, for red wine notably from the Beightol family’s impressive and manifestly impeccably-farmed Phinny Hill Vineyard whose slopes overlook the immediately adjacent and much more famous Champoux Vineyard that Dick Beightol helped plant and managed in its years as part of the surrounding Mercer Ranch. Foster, incidentally, reports very seldom adding tartaric acid to any of his musts, white or red; yet brightness and juiciness characterize most of the wines I tasted on my first visit with him. For reds – portions of which ferment in wooden uprights – he utilizes various means of extraction, including air-injection. Beast represents a parallel label to Buty (hence the prefacing of those wines descriptions with “Beast;” but reference to Buty does not appear on their labels.).
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