Dark! Mouth-filling, dense and rich. Coffee, dark cocoa, boysenberry, mineral, and earth. It has it all. With wonderful texture and length. Dark. Mouth-filling. Dense. Rich. Repeat.

In 1997 Butch and Jerry Milbrandt planted their first grapevines in Washington’s Columbia Valley AVA. At first glance, Eastern Washington is not your typical wine country. It’s a remote, windswept, high desert dotted with sagebrush and tumbleweeds. It also holds some of the most breath-taking terrain, ranging from deep river gorges to vast mountain ranges and undulating hills formed by Ice Age floods and ancient volcanoes.

The warmest vintage since 2003, cooled off just in time for harvest. The resulting wines were less likely to tip over into overripe flavors or high alcohol levels, and picking proceeded at a normal pace. Total tonnage was up about 5 percent over 2012, a record for the state. 2013 made us thank Sweet Baby Jesus that our white wine vineyards are cool sites at a higher elevation. The very warm vintage cooled down in mid-September allowing us to pick at the perfect moment in the first week of October. This gave us generous full favored wine while still keeping focus.