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As regular readers know, I try to focus this column on well-made wines that taste good but don’t cost too much, so Columbia Crest is definitely my kind of winery.
About 30 years ago, the first Columbia Crest estate vineyards were planted east of Seattle. In their midst soon arose an impressive and classy visitor center authentically styled as a 16th century French country manor house elegantly furnished with European antiques, hand-loomed wall tapestries, Italian tiles and Spanish sconces and chandeliers atop extensive modern winery facilities built underground to maintain year-round temperature and humidity control.
In the late 1980s, Columbia Crest released its first red and white blends and varietals. In 1990, pre-eminent international wine critic Robert Parker included Columbia Crest among his candidates for the world’s 24 “Best Value Wineries.” The highly regarded, influential Impact magazine included Columbia Crest among its “Top Five U.S. Wineries,” and placed it on its “20 Hot Brands” list five consecutive times.
In 1997, Wine Spectator magazine’s first annual reader poll chose Columbia Crest as a “Best Winery for Value in the United States.”
Wine Spectator also honored top-value Columbia Crest Columbia Crest 1994 Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvgnon and good-value Columbia Crest 1995 Columbia Valley Estate Series Chardonnay as “great values in the top 100” in 1997; a dozen more Columbia Crest varietals also have since earned similar honors.
The Columbia Crest portfolio of wines currently has four levels: top-value “Two Vines,” good-value “Grand Estates,” premium-value “Horse Heaven Hills” and super-premium “Reserve.”
Columbia Crest “Two Vines” red, white and rose wines offer vibrant, approachable, fruit-forward well-balanced wines, usually priced for less than $10.
Columbia Crest Grand Estates varietal wines come from a variety of vineyard sites specifically selected for their ability to produce wines with intense fruit and complexity — lush, vibrant wines distinguished by their ripe vibrant intensity, offering pleasantly balanced sweetness and acidity. Columbia Crest Grand Estates wines usually retail for less than $13.
Premium-value wines from the “Horse Heaven Hills” vineyards (I love the name of that appellation!) are crafted to capture a balanced, distinctive varietal intensity with unique undertones. The debut vintages of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Chardonnay were released to “select” markets earlier this year, so I suspect it may be a while before we see them on local shelves. I’ll keep you posted; they sound like they might be worth waiting for.
John Breitlow is a retired Winona State University speech professor who began learning about good wine in the 1950s while serving in Vienna, Austria, with U.S. armed forces.
