Month of Intrigue. Our ‘best-barrel’ red blend is on sale for April.

April continues to be a month of Intrigue! And we will extend the sale on our best barrel blend, 2012 Intrigue! On sale for $24.00 (Regular price $28.00). Cellar Rats pay just $20.60 per bottle.

Blending can be tedious for many winemakers, but for me it’s fun and challenging!  I have degrees in Pure Math and Computer Science, and blending is just one big puzzle to solve.

With over 300 barrels of wine, creating a blend can be daunting, so I always go in with a plan. But of course the wine has the last word, and the plan is usually vastly changed as I go through the process.

Intrigue is our signature wine, and the first vintage was 2005. I designed it originally so that each vintage would be a very different blend, but always what I consider to be our best barrels. So, for example, if we have 10 barrels of Cab, and one or two of them stand out as exceptional, those will go into the Intrigue. In 2012, there were SO MANY great barrels that I ended up with 6 varietals in the blend (never had that many before), and made 474 cases. This wine will age beautifully, if you can manage to hang on to some!

It’s complex, it’s balanced, and it’s downright delicious. It will age beautifully, but it’s drinking nicely right now. How can it do both? Well…that’s part of the intrigue of our Intrigue.

Come in and try it at our Kirkland Tasting Room, or buy online.

And don’t forget, when you buy a case, you become a Cellar Rat for the next year, and that means all kinds of savings and specials on wine!

Cheers!

Bob Delf

Chief Wine (and math) Geek

Northwest Cellars