Stan The Wine Man

I had the awesome privilege of going up to Bellingham to meet with Kyle and Cassie Welch to interview them for my YouTube channel. They own Longship Cellars, Kyle is the winemaker and Cassie is the general manager. Longship Cellars as you know is my winery of the year for 2018. I always pick my winery at the end of each year and make it known in December. I then spend the first part of the next year telling everyone about it. It might seem somewhat convoluted, but it literally takes a year for me to pull the trigger on the winery that I feel should be featured. Kyle and Cassie are awesome people and I see a bright future for them. Kyle has a knack for making solid, approachable wines that have depth, are well made and interesting at the same time. I will be putting the interview on my YouTube channel tomorrow. I hope you get a chance to watch because they are fun and interesting.

During the interview I opened a bottle of their Ginger Man Syrah to try, since that was the wine that first caught my attention. As always, I open the wine prior to the shoot. It doesn’t have a lot of time to air out, and I do this to emulate how most people consume a bottle of wine. The average consumer pops and pours their wine when they get home, perhaps just prior to dinner and it is consumed within the hour. I want people to know what they are going to get based on this criteria. However, I do encourage decanting a wine up to an hour or more before consumption, depending on the type of wine. This really came to light for me with the Ginger Man. After the interview, I put the cork back in the bottle put it in my bag and headed home. Since I live on an island and had a few things to do, that meant when I tried the Ginger Man Syrah again, it was about seven hours later. Let me tell you something. That Syrah went from very good during the interview to absolutely stunning, seven hours later. From experience, I have developed the ability to know if a wine will open up or not with decanting and time. The only way you will get this experience is to decant a few of your wines and find out what I am talking about. You don’t need anything fancy. Do you own a pitcher? Use that. Use a mason jar, use a glass. I think once you try decanting, you will be hooked. It will help you to see how wines change with the oxygen contact. Patience is a virtue, so they say. Whoever “they” are.

While we were chatting after the interview, Kyle mentioned to me that an owner of a wine shop he sold wine to, mentioned that he thought Kyle might be using too much oak. It reminded me of a story that Chuck Reininger told me. One day, the Washington State wine reviewer from the Wine Spectator stopped by Chuck’s tasting room to go through his wines for review. The critic who I will leave nameless told Chuck that he might want to consider more oak treatment on his wines if he wanted better scores. Chuck responded by telling him to buy the winery and make the wine himself. The point is, oak is not an enemy of wine. Used properly, as Kyle does, you get superb wines with good balance that will age nicely. Of course, too much oak will mask the true nature of the juice. Both Chuck Reininger and Kyle Welch make great wines. Different styles of course, but great nonetheless. I don’t believe any winemaker should alter their winemaking style to garner big scores in wine periodicals, or to satisfy the tastes of any individual. Kyle makes wine the way he believes it should be made. Hopefully, after tasting the product, you will become a fan of his style as I have become. If you don’t agree, start your own winery and make wine the way you want it.

Cheers!

Stan The Wine Man