2023 Leonetti Cellar Merlot Walla Walla Valley 6pk 6x750ml

Leonetti Cellar is Walla Walla Valley's first winery, founded in 1977 by Gary and Nancy Figgins on land where Gary's grandparents, Francesco and Rosa Leonetti, established their farm in 1906. Gary planted his first commercial vineyard in 1974 on that same family ground. What began as one acre of vines became the foundation of Washington's modern wine industry — and in the 1980s, it was Leonetti's Merlot that proved Eastern Washington could produce red wine at the highest level, putting the state on the global map.

Chris Figgins, fourth-generation steward and now CEO and Winemaking Director, took over winemaking in 2001. The house style remains bold and expressive but balanced and structured — seriously rich efforts with a perfect blend of power and finesse, gorgeously managed tannin, seamless textures, and awesome purity. Jeb Dunnuck's words, not ours. Total production is around 5,500 cases, all estate fruit, aged 15–22 months in a mix of old and new French oak.

The 2023 Merlot opens dark purple with magenta highlights. The nose is firm blackberry, blueberry, acai, with a faint whiff of dark chocolate. The fruit starts restrained and tart, then opens into lusciousness — full, soft, round, with a cherry-skin grippiness that builds as you sip. Cedar, chicory, vermouth add savory complexity to the dominant blue-ish fruit. Swirl it and you get smooth vanilla-almond, crushed violet, rose oil. It softens and evolves remarkably over an hour in the glass.

Decant this for at least two hours. The wine is precise, focused like a laser, and needs air to show what it can do. This is Merlot that demonstrated a region's potential and hasn't let up since.