Earlier this week, I sat down with Northstar winemaker David ‘Merf’ Merfeld, and together we tasted through a vertical of Northstar Columbia Valley Merlots. The vintages tasted were 1995 – 2007, missing only the initial (1994) bottling. One wine – the 1998 – was very slightly tainted with TCA; otherwise all were quite sound. The wines were poured from 750’s, and tasted one at a time from oldest to youngest.
I made tasting notes as I would for new releases, and just for fun, I scored the wines, based upon how they are showing presently. Later, I went back to my original reviews and scores and compared them. In some of the notes below, you’ll see two numbers; the first is the score from this tasting, and the second is the original score from my initial review. (I did not review vintages prior to 1998, and seem to have missed 2000). Obviously, many wines seem to have benefited significantly from additional bottle age.