Washington Wine Score at the BGO

Washington Wine Score at the BGO

Amazing bargains on Washington wine

I've written more than once about finding wine bargains at the Bargain Grocery Store (better known as BGO). Today, I outdid myself. Local Washington BGOs are selling wine from two Washington state wineries, Pacific Rim (famous for Riesling) and Silver Lake Winery. My local BGO is selling Pacific Rim's 2007 Pacific Rim Dry Riesling, and from Silver Lake Winery, the 2007 Roza Riesling, the 2007 Merlot, the 2007 Syrah, the 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon, and the 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon-Merlot. These are all from their table wine "Cask" tier, and are $4.99 each at the BGO, with a 20% discount through the end of the week, so that's a mere four bucks a bottle. The Silver Lake wines usually run around $8.99 on sale for the reds, and about a dollar less than that for the whites. I like their 2007 Silverlake Chardonnay quite a bit, and we may end up getting a few bottles of that, if there are any left. This time, we brought home the 2007 Roza Riesling, a bottle of the 2007 Syrah, and the Cabernet Sauvignon. I'll let you know what I think when I try them. I have no idea why these are being sold through BGO, but I suspect it's to make room for the new vintage. While their Web site is a travesty (n.b. any Web site with "This site is best viewed in Internet Explorer 7" as a public warning was designed by an less than professional designer, and adminned by someone who is somewhat lacking in the basic principles of UI and user-support), I've enjoyed Silver Lake wines in the past.

The Pacific Rim Dry Riesling is possibly my favorite Washington Riesling, though to be fair, it's technically a blend of German Riesling (selected by Johannes Selbach from Germany's famed Mosel region) with Pacific Rim's own Columbia Valley Riesling. The result is 80% Washington Riesling and 20% German Riesling. In the case of the Pacific Rim Dry Riesling, I suspect that they're getting rid of an old label. These bottles do not have the bottle art of other 2007 Pacific Rim Dry Rieslings I've seen, though the differences are small, it is a branding issue, and I can see why they might prefer to sell them at a loss. At $3.99 a bottle the BGO sticker price, on sale this week for 20% off, we managed to pick up several bottles at $3.21 a bottle, instead of the usual price of around $9.99. It's often difficult to find any of Pacific Rim's wines, other than the Late Harvest Riesling, so I couldn't be happier.

ETA: Pacific Rim tells me that the Pacific Rim Dry Riesling is actually from 2006; thanks for letting me know. This is a lovely wine, and I note that I've also been able to find the Pacific Rim Chenin blanc, which is just magical. I write about both in the near future.