Rasa Vineyards Living In The Limelight Petit Verdot 2024
From the winery:
Rasa Vineyards is the realization of our passion, vision and commitment to create a world-class winery focused on producing ultra-premium, terroir specific wines from Eastern Washington and Northeastern Oregon.
We fell in love with wine in 1991. Since then, we’ve tasted hundreds of wines every year and developed a deep appreciation for everything about wine. For years we dreamed of starting our own winery.
In 2006, Billo applied to the UC Davis Masters program for Viticulture and Winemaking. He was one of ten to get accepted that year. He called me and asked what he should do. It was the same year I was turning 40. If we didn’t do this now, we never would and we would regret it for the rest of our lives. So, he quit Hewlett Packard and went to school full-time. I spent the next year formulating a business plan, doing financial projections, and creating operational links to ensure we had a path to success.
In 2007, while Billo was still in school, we felt we were ready. That year, we created two wines: 2007 QED (a blend of Syrah, Grenache, and Mourvedre) and 2007 Principia Reserve Syrah. The QED received 94 points from Wine Spectator and the Principia received a perfect rating from Rand Sealey of Review of Washington Wines – not a bad way to start.
Ten years later, we continue to be proud of what we do. We remain committed to making the best wines in the world. In 2006, we made the decision to start our winery, we subsequently left our high-tech jobs behind, and we’ve never looked back.
This is a rather rare style for Petit Verdot. It shows what can be achieved with the right vineyard and the appropriate attention to detail in the winemaking process. This wine has finesse, power, complexity, and impeccable balance—a rarity amongst Petit Verdots. Deep dark purple in color with perfumed notes of violets, marionberry, mulberry, sandalwood, and dark chocolate. Intense notes of marionberry, huckleberry, black cherry, roasted herbs, and black licorice on the palate supported by ripe tannic structure and nervy acidity. Additional nuances of dark chocolate, incense, espresso, earth, and tar notes appear on the long finish. The wine is very concentrated with high amounts of dry extract. This wine can be enjoyed in the next year or two for its youthful exuberance, but 6-8 years of patience will be generously rewarded with added layers of complexity, will hold for 12+ years.
Label Story from Billo and Pinto: In Bordeaux, winemakers are allowed to use up to six red grape varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec, and Carmenère. Carmenère is rarely used in Bordeaux. The major actors are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc. Petit Verdot and Malbec are cast in supporting roles. Petit Verdot provides acid and color to Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot-dominated wines. This is why we initially decided to work with Petit Verdot. Our intention was to use it as a supporting actor in our blend called “in Order to form a more perfect Union” (and we do use some of it for that purpose).
We decided to get our Petit Verdot from Dionysus Vineyard’s Block 13b. Block 13b is situated on a 10-15% slope at an elevation of about 800ft. The soil is Sagehill very fine sandy loam. It’s a perfect area to grow Petit Verdot. In fact, it’s so good, that we were compelled to highlight the grape. So we created a wine where the Petit Verdot is the main actor with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc in supporting roles.
We decided to call the wine “Living in the Limelight” because Petit Verdot is now the star. The name comes from a line in one of our favorite songs from one of our favorite rock bands. The band is Rush and the song is Limelight.
