Varietally pure and sourced from five sites including those of the estate, L’Ecole’s 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon Walla Walla delivers rich cassis and mulberry mingled with sea oats and sprinkled with black pepper. An aura of distilled pit fruits lends the nose high-toned intensity. A savor of salted caramel and nut oils, along with hints of almond extract and vanilla, make for an almost honeyed but at the same time mouthwatering impression through a lingering finish. This handsome effort ought to be worth following for at least a half dozen years. (The corresponding generic bottling was a bit chewy and graceless.) 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