2015 La Rata Wines La Rata

• By Stephen Tanzer
  Focus on Washington: The New Normal (Nov 2018), 11/1/2018, (See more on Vinous...)

  (La Rata Wines La Rata Washington Red) Login and sign up and see review text.

JebDunnuck.com

• By Jeb Dunnuck
  Latest Releases from Washington State, 4/5/2018, (See more on JebDunnuck.com...)

  (La Rata Wines La Rata) Login and sign up and see review text.

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull La Rata, 9/19/2018

  (La Rata) Hello friends. Today we have the return of a special wine. Offering Elizabeth Bourcier’s La Rata affords me a rare, wonderful opportunity: to write about the vines, the animals, and the people of the incomparable Cayuse Vineyards.As it has been from the inaugural 2012 vintage, Full Pull is the exclusive retail partner for La Rata. Outside of a handful of top restaurants, we are the only place to source this wine. Now then, let’s get logistics out of the way, and then we’ll get to the fun stuff: LOGISTICS a) Elizabeth and I have agreed to allocate as follows. First, we will make sure that all list members who were allocated last year’s 2014 La Rata will receive an allocation at least equal to last year’s allocation. After those folks are taken care of, we will move onto list members ordering La Rata for the first time, using our normal allocation method (everyone gets one bottle before anyone gets two; formula for prioritizing allocations includes overall orders, frequency of orders, recency of orders, and list tenure, among other factors). b) The wine is already safely tucked away in the warehouse. We will begin allocating La Rata on Tuesday Sept 25 at 12pm Pacific time. Any order requests received after are unlikely to be considered. The wine will be available for pickup as early as Thursday Sept 27. c) Please note that our demand for each of the first three vintages *vastly* exceeded our supply. Given the growing buzz surrounding this wine, I expect this year’s demand to be at least as high. And supply is actually *down* by 5.2% this year. (Gulp.) We’re going to limit order requests to 6 bottles, but likelier allocations are 2 or 3 bottles for folks who purchased last year, and 1 or 2 bottle for newbies. d) Our normal policy about trying to ship in full-case increments will not apply to La Rata. If you end up allocated 1 or 2 or 3 bottles and want those shipped during our upcoming autumn shipping window, we will accommodate that. Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to get these beautiful wines into happy homes. ORIGIN STORY Okay, now the fun part. I’ll link to our original La Rata offer from three years ago. That’s the long version. The more concise version is this. Inspired by a bottle of excellent Priorat (Clos Erasmus Laurel) consumed during a harvest lunch in 2012, Cayuse assistant vigneronne Elizabeth Bourcier had an epiphany. Much like in Priorat, the stones area of the southern Walla Walla Valley represent a rare region where Grenache and Cabernet Sauvignon ripen at the same time, can be picked on the same day. The experiment is born. Grenache from Armada Vineyard. Cab from En Cerise. What starts as “Priorat” scrawled on the puncheons is soon shortened to “The Rat” and then Spanishized to “La Rata.” It’s a name that works on multiple levels. Elizabeth’s zodiac sign is the rat (spirit, wit, alertness, delicacy, flexibility, vitality; it fits). She still, despite having one of the most coveted roles in the Walla Walla Valley, thinks of herself, at heart, as a cellar rat. And how did Full Pull have the good fortune to get involved? Well, Elizabeth was looking for a sales partner. Their team already had three mailing lists (Cayuse, No Girls, Horsepower), and they didn’t need another. They wanted one exclusive partner for the entire production run of La Rata. They liked our model. They liked the list members they had met. They knew me. (And here I have to pause and give many many thanks to Sean Sullivan, who way back when invited me to tag along on some of his Cayuse trips, and introduced me to Elizabeth and Christophe and Trevor and the whole jolly Cayuse gang. None of this would have happened without him.) WHAT’S NEW Since Elizabeth guides this wine so carefully from vine to bottle, I’ll let her introduce the new vintage: 2015 was another hot vintage and was certainly the most compact harvest I have experienced. In the vineyards and wine studio, we worked diligently to conserve freshness and balance in the wines with the quick ripening. The early summer heat made for a great Grenache year as the flavors were full-bodied and slightly richer than normal vintages. On the nose, I get cassis bud, chalk, forest floor, dried flower petal, fresh strawberry, candied orange peel, dried leaves, spice box, and mushroom. The mouth feel is extremely lush and generous, but with pronounced intensity and length. It shows the characteristic salty savoriness that is consistent in the La Rata year after year. The biggest change over the past two vintages has been the addition of Syrah to the blend, and in 2015 the 10% Syrah comes from La Paciencia Vineyard (also the source of the outstanding No Girls Syrah), to go with the usual Grenache (54%; Armada Vineyard) and Cabernet Sauvignon (36%; En Cerise). I think all of us who love Syrah from this part of the Walla Walla Valley feel a little tingle up our spines knowing that Syrah is in the mix. At four years in, Elizabeth’s growing comfort with developing this blend is becoming more and more obvious, and there’s a pretty easy argument to be made that this is the most successful vintage of La Rata to date. That argument began to solidify in my mind on May 9, when I opened the Wine Spectator Insider in my inbox to find this. To see La Rata sitting there on the same page as (and with the same score as) Quilceda Creek Cab and Leonetti Reserve – two Washington benchmarks if ever there were such a pair – took my breath away. Wine Spectator: Copyrighted material withheld. [To add context to that review, I should mention that the Tim Fish era at Wine Spectator has been a little tough score-wise. To wit, of the 439 Washington wines he has reviewed in 2018, only a single wine (2015 Horsepower Syrah) has earned a better review, and even that was a 95pt review. All that to say, Tim Fish believes La Rata is one of the single most compelling wines coming out of the northwest, and I’m (with my bias fully acknowledged) inclined to agree.] The next shoes to drop both belonged to Sean Sullivan: first, that La Rata would be included in his 30 Most Exciting Wines piece for Seattle Met Magazine: This unusual blend of grenache, cabernet sauvignon, and syrah made by Cayuse Vineyards assistant vignerrone Elizabeth Bourcier, is unique in the valley. Yes, the aromas and flavors of earth, campfire, sea salt, cherry, and raspberry are dazzling in their own right. But the real story of this wine is the insane finish — more than 45 seconds long. And second, that Wine Enthusiast is set to publish a 95pt for La Rata in their December issue, topping Sean’s previous La Rata high of 94pts for the 2012 vintage. International Wine Report (Owen Bargreen): “The 2015 'La Rata' Red Wine is a blend of 54% Grenache with 26% Cabernet and 10% Syrah. Inspired by the top wines of Priorat, Elizabeth Bourcier decided to make a small tank of co-fermented Grenache and Cabernet Sauvignon and it has been a remarkable success. This year’s release displays a slightly darker color than previous vintages, likely due to the addition of the Syrah. The nose takes on stunning aromatics with barn floor, red cherry candy, guava purée, teaberry, black truffle oil and umami. Incredibly perfumed, the intoxicating bouquet continues to bring you back to the glass for more. The texture to this wine entices and beautifully envelops the palate. The savory and saline quality to this wine is quite striking, showing charcuterie with red cherries, cranberries, guava, white truffle and umami flavors. A downright stunner, this gorgeous wine will cellar well over the next decade, but is nearly impossible to resist right now. Drink 2018-2028. 95pts.” It’s always a trip watching reviewers attempt to capture the salty meaty umami funk that makes this wine so special. My notes this year included things like ham hock, miso paste, Castelvetrano olive. All paired to more traditional Grenache notes of raspberry fruit and dusty sagebrush (Christophe’s first comment on the nose: “this Garrigue is like ‘BOOM!’”) The Cabernet component doesn’t show up much on the nose; it seems to reserve its energy for the palate, where it offers lovely textural heft and backbone, a structural foundation for the plush, palate-staining Grenache fruit. I love the wonderful salinity and sanguine minerality here, which serve as perfect foils to the delicious red fruit. This vintage is so classy, so purpose-built. UPDATE FROM ANNUAL CAYUSE VISIT A quick word on my annual spring visit to Cayuse. The visit began – as it always does – in the vineyards. But this year we had company. Company in the form of Monsieur Bayard, one of the handful of draft horses that work the Horsepower vineyards, which are too narrowly spaced for machine cultivation. I learned quickly that we were not there to watch Bayard work, but instead to work with Bayard in Sur Echelas Vineyard. Here is a video from that morning (Cinematographer: Christophe Baron; Horsemaster: Joel Sokoloff.) It was completely exhilarating just being in the presence of all that equine power, and a good reminder that – if some cult wineries are about marketing and fashionability and conspicuous consumption – Cayuse and Horsepower are, on the other hand, about obsessive farming; about the careful stewardship of vines that allow terroir to tell its story. The vineyards remain the lungs of Cayuse and Horsepower, holy ground in northwest winemaking. I’m grateful to Christophe and Elizabeth for letting me visit each year, and to the warmth and hospitality always displayed by Cécile Randon and chef Christopher Galasso as well. It’s a special group of people continuing to farm and craft extraordinary wine. The fact that our list members have access to one of them is a source of unending delight to our entire team.