Seven Hills Pentad

Description

From a 50% base of Cabernet Sauvignon blended with 21% Petit Verdot and 7-8% each of Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Merlot

While continuing to source from the eponymous Walla Walla vineyard that this winerys proprietors Casey and Vicky McClellan helped plant three decades ago and that has since also become a mainstay for many others, Seven Hills the producer taps into a wide range of other fruit sources, some well-known. During a 15 year stretch making wine from Seven Hills Vineyard under this label, the McClellans and their then vineyard partners only shared its fruit with Leonetti and a couple of other wineries. After the dissolution of the original Seven Hills Vineyard partnership, the couple dropped out of winemaking for a time but retained contracts on their share of acreage, reemerging as a winery in 2003, along with a McClellan estate vineyard immediately adjacent to Seven Hills Vineyard. The house style often (at least in the reds I tasted) incorporates herbaceous elements yet at the same time tends toward almost syrupy fruit  notwithstanding Casey McClellans claim to be a relatively earlier picker and his wines modest alcohol levels  with prominent impressions of oak (often including its tannins) even though the share of new wood is typically not more than half. Some of the reds are given well over two years elevage, which in the case of a 2009 Red Mountain Cabernet Reserve resulted in some dulling opacity and brutal tannins. Whites  particularly Riesling  from a wide range of vineyard sources represent a significant share of Seven Hills production, but I cant say that I was notably impressed by the three 2011s they showed me, the Riesling among which was a bit sweet-sour with a rather