2013 Reininger Cabernet Sauvignon

JancisRobinson.com

• By Jancis Robinson, MW
  3/11/2017, (See more on JancisRobinson.com...)

  (Reininger Cabernet Sauvignon Walla Walla Valley Red) Subscribe to see review text.

• By Stephen Tanzer
  Focus on Washington: Hot Times in the Desert (Nov 2016), 11/1/2016, (See more on Vinous...)

  (Reininger Winery Cabernet Sauvignon Washington) Login and sign up and see review text.

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Deal of the Year (of the Week), 1/27/2019

  (Reininger Cabernet Sauvignon Walla Walla Valley) Hello friends. I have a feeling y’all are going to get tired of me hyping offers as “the deal of the year.” It reminds me of wineries describing “the vintage of the century” when they just said the same thing three years ago. So yeah, I’ll try to keep the hype in check, but my goodness are we inundated right now with excellent opportunities. My first stab at the DotY was the 2014 Le Jugement from Three of Cups (and I mean, come on; that was a whole fourteen days ago!). And while today’s discount isn’t quite as staggering (a mere 57% off release, as opposed to 66% off for Le Juge), it has quite a few qualities that could tip the scale in its favor. To begin with, it’s Cabernet Sauvignon. Le Juge was a Rhone Blend, which is certainly a hot up-and-comer category. But Cab is Cab. Nothing else comes close to approaching it in popularity. Next, it’s Cab that’s six years past vintage. This isn’t a 2017 Cab that you need to put in a dusty section of your garage for four years. This is winery cellar-aged Cabernet. And what a winery! Reininger is one of the stalwarts of the Walla Walla Valley. Part of the old guard. The standard bearers. To taste wines from folks like Chuck Reininger is to be reminded why they bear the standard in the first place. The wines are clean, graceful, stylish. Reininger sources from some of the oldest plots in the valley. And they quietly continue their record of consistent excellence. To be clear, although our TPU pricing looks more like Reininger’s Helix label, this is indeed main-label Reininger, which comes entirely from Walla Walla Valley fruit. In this case, it is a blend of old- and new-guard fruit, with Pepper Bridge representing the old, and XL Vineyard the new. XL is part of Sevein, a project we’ve written about many times, most often with regards to L’Ecole 41’s Ferguson Vineyard. Here’s the latest map of the Sevein sites, which will give you a sense of where XL is compared to spots like Ferguson and Leonetti’s Serra Pedace. These fractured-basalt south-valley vineyards are changing the face of the Walla Walla Valley one bottle at a time, and this is no exception. 100% Cab, this was aged in 50% new French oak 20 months before bottling in August 2015. It clocks in at 14.2% listed alc and begins with a nose with notes both primary (black plum, blackcurrant, cedar) and tertiary (dusty earth, leather spice, dried cherry), good indication of a wine about to enter peak drinking. The palate is very Walla Walla Valley, with big brooding black fruit and black tea notes tinged with a savory edge and swaddled in cocoa-powder barrel tones. I love the orange-peel acidity keeping things fresh; so too the way this mixes Pepper Bridge fruit-and-tannins with XL’s insistent minerality. It’s not easy to coax so much complexity out of a 100% Cabernet but this is swimming in subtleties. What a balanced beauty, with years of fascinating evolution ahead. Oh, and why the deep discount? I don’t know for sure, because I didn’t ask (I was more focused on getting to the point where I could hit Send). But evidence points to the fact that the winery has moved onto selling the 2014 vintage through its tasting rooms (for $50!). Most wineries don’t like to have multiple vintages out there in the marketplace, so there’s extra incentive to find partners to help close out the previous vintage.