UpsideDown Artist Series Marsanne-Roussane 2020

Grapes: 70% Marsanne, 30% Roussanne

ABV: 14.5%

Region: Yakima Valley, WA

Winemaker: Seth Kitzke

Viniculture: SalmonSafe, with Organic certification pending

Winemaking: Picked together for co-fermentation, Native yeasts, barrel fermentation, no adjustments, no fining, small amount of skin contact with Roussanne, vegan.10 months sur lie, 30% New French Puncheon, 70% neutral oak.

“mandarin orange and marshmallow”

Seth and Audrey Kitzke are two of my favorite people in Washington wine. They have a great sense of humor, a deep and abiding love for the industry, and they’re hungry to do and learn more. They have a high level of care in the vineyard and winery when it comes to making honest and transparent wine.

One of the biggest issues facing the wine world right now is additives. A lot of the wine today that is packaged, sold and marketed as a pastoral farm product is not necessarily being honest. Wines aren’t required to label their ingredients, so things like mega purple, velcorin, glycerin formula and other additives can be dumped into wines to boost their flavor profile, and the consumer is none the wiser.

That’s why making great, transparent wine is a challenge. You have to produce a decent-tasting, shelf-stable cuvée without the aid of a chemist’s litany of powders and flavorings. So when Seth and Audrey create tasty, pure, chemically-free wine at UpsideDown, there’s a lot of work that goes into it.

We’ve featured their wine before, and it was a hit with a lot of Circle subscribers. Specifically, the ClusterF@#**!! Grenache that was in our July release. You can now see what the Kitzkes can do with white wine, and this Marsanne-Roussanne blend is a really special white. These grapes are native to southern France, where they form the core of wines like white Châteauneuf du Pâpe, St-Péray, and Hermitage Blanc.

These grapes are grown in Yakima Valley’s Konnowac vineyard, at nearly 1500 feet of elevation. This is the high water boundary of the ancient Missoula Flood, which cascaded around Eastern Washington towards the end of the last Ice Age. It’s also a high-altitude site to grow wine grapes, which means that night and daytime temperatures fluctuate quite a bit, preserving freshness and acidity in the grapes.

One of the key things about this white is the softer aromatic profile. This is not a Riesling or a Gewurztraminer. This wine’s best attribute is its texture. There’s a whiff of fresh lemon, peach and apricot on the nose, but it’s on the palate that the senses are really lifted. Butterscotch, golden delicious apple skin, mandarin orange and marshmallow, with tangy, fruity acidity. Pair this wine with itself, or with pan-seared white fish.

Music: “Let it Lie” by the Bros. Landreth

There’s a groovy, swaggery swing to this song, and for those reasons it captured the spirit of this wine for me.

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- Jackson