We had a quiet night in Louisville as the next night we were all going out for a big dinner.  We had a wonderful lunch and we were just going to relax for the evening.  My Bride was busy getting her business taken care of, as she had to look forward to two days of continuing education classes to maintain one of her professional designations, everything else was a bonus.   Your kindly old Raconteur can always find something to do.  We were all getting ready for a dinner in and our hosts were getting the barbecue ready for the first time.  We were going to have grilled salmon with a salad and some sides.  We had brought some wine with us, and of course our hosts had their cellar as well.

They have recently been enjoying Sauvignon Blanc instead of their usual Chardonnay wines, so I thought that I would bring one that I just recently had and really enjoyed.  The Ladera Sauvignon Blanc 2016 was the wine I tasted and bought, as I was that impressed with the wine.  This wine is a blend of three different clones of Sauvignon Blanc; Clone #1, Liparita and Sauvignon Musque.  Since they are a mountain vineyard the fruit was harvested in the evening to keep it cool.  The fruit was whole cluster pressed and cool settled for twenty-four hours.  Then the juice was aged Sur Lie in both Stainless Steel, which was seventy-six percent, and French Oak of which nine percent was new; for six months.  The wine had a perfume nose that belied just the typical grapefruit and citrus that one expects from this grape in the New World, with a soft light color and a very long finish, which really impressed me.  I usually like a Sauvignon Blanc in the summer to make the hot days more bearable, but this wine is not to be quaffed, but more to be enjoyed with like-minded friends.  I think that I found a couple of converts to this particular wine, and it was the first time that my Bride had it as well, as I made her wait for the right moment to open one of the bottles.

The type of wine that I thought we would have, would have been a Pinot Noir, but they opened up a rather big bold Cabernet Sauvignon for the grilled salmon.   It was a new wine for me, and it was a rather experimental and new wine being made in Washington State with a flashy label, and you know that I enjoy unique label art as well.  The back of the bottle states “Street art bears an uncanny resemblance to winemaking.  For both, the environment affects the final art, resulting in a collaboration between artist and landscape.”  The wine is Intrinsic Wine Company Cabernet Sauvignon 2015 of Columbia Valley.  After a couple of years of experimentation, they have developed what they call “extreme maceration” where the wine stayed in constant contact with the skins for nine months after harvest.  Fifty percent of the wine was produced this way.  The wine was a blend of using both neutral French Oak and concrete vats for the aging and fermentation.   It had a big bold taste and was easy to drink immediately.   The tannins seemed to be in balance right from the get go and it was an interesting wine.