Vinous

• By Stephen Tanzer
  Focus on Washington: The New Normal (Nov 2018), 11/1/2018 (link)

  (Kevin White Winery Heritage Dubrul Vineyard Washington Red) Subscribe to see review text.

JamesSuckling.com

• By James Suckling
  3/16/2018 (link)

  (Kevin White Winery Yakima Valley Heritage Dubrul Vineyard, Red, United States) Subscribe to see review text.

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Kevin White, 3/16/2018

  (Kevin White Winery Heritage DuBrul Vineyard) Hello friends. In the beginning, Kevin White would release his wines once a year to great buzz and excitement. We’d offer his ridiculously excellent La Fraternite and En Hommage, immediately sell out, and set the clock 365 days forward. Starting in 2016, Kevin inaugurated a second release, offering one well-priced gateway-drug wine and one rare single-vineyard gem. So now, about 182½ days after the first release of the year, we offer his ridiculously excellent Red Wine and Heritage, immediately sell out, set the clock roughly 182½ days forward, and the cycle continues. Today is that day:Heritage is an unusual wine for Kevin, who has become known as a Rhone specialist. This wine is squarely Bordeaux, a blend of Merlot (58%) and Cabernet Sauvignon (42%), raised in French oak (some new, some used) for about two years. How does a Rhone guy dip his toe into Bordeaux? It seems like Kevin could not resist the siren call of DuBrul Vineyard, one of the finest sites in the state. After all, a bottle of wine from DuBrul and an eventual visit to the vineyard are parts of the winery’s origin story, as richly recounted by Sean Sullivan in an old posting on Washington Wine Report. And to further quote Mr. Sullivan, you may also remember what he wrote about the wine’s debut in 2013 for Seattle Met Magazine: DuBrul Vineyard in the Yakima Valley has long established itself as one of Washington’s top sites. It’s the estate vineyard for Cote Bonneville, which consistently puts wines in our annual Top 100 Washington wines list, and is also the fruit source for a number of other high-end Washington producers, such as Owen Roe and Rasa Vineyards. As DuBrul Vineyard wines have garnered acclaim and high scores, the cost of the wines have inevitably crept up, with most coming in somewhere between $50 and $100. That’s part of what makes this [Kevin White’s Heritage] so exciting. It comes from the same vineyard but comes in at a more than reasonable $35—and it’s every bit as good. Sean’s totally right. As DuBrul’s reputation has grown, so too have prices, and it has become more and more difficult to source wines from this outstanding vineyard. The only other DuBrul wine we offer with any regularity is Rasa’s Creative Impulse, and that one generally goes for about a hundred bucks. This vintage immediately blasts out of the glass with fruit and florals: bright cherry, moody cassis, wild roses, and crushed violet. It’s a exuberant nose, lifted and attractive. In the mouth, the silky, polished texture provides just-right framing for those continuing notes from the nose, as well as a spicy acidity. This is a complicated, pleasurable wine; a fine introduction to an important, difficult-to-source Washington vineyard, from one of the most exciting winemakers in our state. For those keeping score, the listed alcohol is 14.5%.