2016 Dowsett Family Riesling Aunt Diane's Vineyard

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

  (Dowsett Family Winery Riesling Aunt Diane's Vineyard (columbia Gorge) Washington White) Login and sign up and see review text.

Full Pull

• By Paul Zitarelli
  Full Pull Summer Whites, 8/12/2018

  (Dowsett Family Riesling Aunt Diane's Vineyard) Hello friends. Summer in Seattle is woefully short. At least, that’s what everyone says, but the last two weeks of temperatures playing in the 90s makes me skeptical that summer will ever end. We still have plenty of those perfect PacNW summer days full of lake-swimming, alfresco dining, and Vitamin D left. So today, we’ve got a summer three pack of white wines for you, each of them a beautiful pairing for enjoying the rest of your summer.Chris Dowsett’s Gewurztraminer is consistently one of the finest white wines made in Washington, and I have to believe it’s one of the finest new-world Gewurzs period. So this should be no surprise: Chris makes a damned good Riesling as well. When Paul told him he liked the name of the vineyard, too, his response: that’s literally my Aunt Diane. So yeah, Aunt Diane inherited this semi-abandoned, 1980s-planted vineyard in the Columbia Gorge, and Chris and his aunt have been rehabbing it since. It’s a wild, fecund place that grows not just grapes, but apparently also strawberries and morel mushrooms in between the rows (here’s a pic of morels picked from between the vines in spring 2014). This 2016 opens with a downright delicious mix of fruit and flower (stone fruit and peach blossoms), stony minerals, lemon verbena, and a petrol hint. Chris has his Riesling style dialed in; this wine is consistently dry and lean and oh so racy. Citrus, minerals, touches of green herbs—it’s bright and lifted throughout. This is clean, pure wine that drinks like it was chiseled straight out of Columbia Gorge rock. It’s a singular Washington Riesling, and a real rarity.