2015 Andrew Will Red Champoux Vineyard

The 2015 Champoux Vineyard is stunning, busting from the glass with a precocious bouquet of ripe cherries, minty blackberries, violets and anise. On the palate, it's full-bodied, layered and almost voluptuous, with velvety, melting tannins that frame a succulent core of beautifully delineated fruit. The finish is long and fragrant. Infinitely seductive and exquisitely balanced, I struggle to remember an Andrew Will Champoux that was quite this delicious straight out of the gates, yet the wine clearly has the potential to evolve for two decades. The 2015 is a blend of 51% Merlot, 32% Cabernet Franc, 12% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5% Petit Verdot.

The 2015 Champoux is a beauty. Concentrated, rich, full-bodied and layered, it offers a rocking nose of blackcurrants, graphite, lead pencil, iodine, and salty minerality. Ripe, rounded, and opulent, yet with good freshness and purity, it needs 3-4 years of bottle age and will keep for two decades. I was able to taste both the 2014s and 2015s from Vashon Island-based Andrew Will, which is run by Chris Camarda. As always, Chris releases two appellation blends (Esploso and Sorella) and a bevy of single vineyard blends from some of the top sites in Washington State (Champoux, Ciel du Cheval, Mays’ Discovery, and Two Blondes. Readers looking for classic, age-worthy Bordeaux blends from the United States can’t go wrong here and these wines continue to fly too far under the radar. Give these a try!