Devium Les Collines Vineyard White Wine 2023

The Vibe (from Devium): 45% Grenache Blanc, 28% Roussanne, 27% Viognier. In the last couple of vintages, I have become obsessed with time. The time required for extraction, the time it takes for fermentation to complete, the time that a wine rests in tank, in barrel, in bottle. Every one of these factors plays a vital part in making up the profile and personality of a wine. With this wine, I seem to always be looking for just a little more time. Unlike the 2022 vintage, I chose to foot tread and macerate this white wine on the skins for 4 days. I find more and more that a short maceration on white wines helps to bring out texture, tension, and personality. Beyond adding time in maceration, I also felt that this wine could benefit from more time in barrel and in bottle, so I doubled the amount of barrel aging to a year and held the wine in bottle for an additional 6 months before release. The results are transformational. The 2023 vintage retains all of the freshness and focus of the 2022, but with added depth and vigor. I couldn’t be happier with the direction this wine is going.

The winemaker: Keith Johnson takes an unconventional approach when it comes to Washington winemaking, working with higher elevation, north-facing vineyards and whole clusters in neutral oak to achieve fresh, low alcohol wines that are true to their terroir and an honest representation of the fruit. These are exciting wines because they eschew the norms of conventional Washington winemaking. They are true to themselves, while remaining balanced and pure. He now works with several vineyard sites, mostly high elevation, north-facing plots to allow long ripening seasons and fresh, low alcohol fruit.