The Under-the-Radar Quilceda Creek Makes Powerful Washington State Cabernets

Quilceda Creek’s Cabernet Sauvignon wines from Washington State.

        Quilceda Creek
      




    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    


  



  Text size

Paul Golitzin recalls working with his father, Alex, in the family’s Washington state vineyards when he was 7 years old. By 18, he made his first reserve wine, and by 21, he was Quilceda Creek’s winemaker.

Since 1992, Paul, 54, has steered this small, family-owned winery to multiple accolades by making some of the very best Cabernet Sauvignon wines in the world. Quilceda Creek’s flagship Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon has been named among Wine Spectator’s top 10 wines globally four times since 2006, and it, together with its other three top Cabernets (Palangat, Galitzine, and Tchelistcheff), have received 100-point scores from critics more than 30 times.

For Paul, the work is hard, but he’s a natural. “A lot of stuff I did was self-taught, and being led by my own palate,” he says.

Though he didn’t formally train as a winemaker, Paul did have great mentors. First there was his father, who with his wife, Jeannette, founded Quilceda Creek in 1978 just over a decade after Alex’s job took them to Washington from northern California and they couldn’t find quality local wines to drink.

Paul Golitzin, president and director of winemaking at Quilceda Creek.

        Quilceda Creek

Alex, who was born in France to Russian parents, was a chemical engineer, but his connections to winemaking ran deep: His family had descended from Prince Lev Sergeevich Galitzine, who was the winemaker for an estate owned by Czar Nicholas II. Even more relevant—Alex’s maternal uncle (and his family’s sponsor when they moved to the U.S. in 1946), was André Tchelistcheff, who had also escaped from Russia and was a French-trained scientist and winemaker who directed the winemaking at George La Tour’s Beaulieu Vineyards in Napa Valley in 1938. Tchelistcheff later also became a wine consultant for many of what became California’s top-tier wineries.

When Alex began making wine in his garage, Tchelistcheff became his consultant, too. Later, he guided Paul, as did Tchelistcheff’s son, Dmitri. Paul absorbed their knowledge and skills while working in the winery’s cellar after school and on weekends as he was growing up. A trip to France with his parents when Paul was 15 years old opened his mind, and palate, to the taste of French wines.

“I got the bug back then,” Paul says. “I took some tours and listened to what they were doing and tried to apply some of that when I got back.”

MORE: E. Guigal Is Adding a Fourth ‘La-La’ to Its Famed Stable of Cote- Roties

He poured all of that into the reserve wine he made at age 18 in 1988. Achieving the perfection of France’s great Bordeaux wines has been his intention ever since. Paul recalls tasting Château Haut-Brion 1989, a celebrated first-growth Bordeaux, and thinking, “whoa, that’s amazing.” At the time, he was comparing it to his 1992 reserve, which “looked pretty good next to it, but not quite as good, so I was like, ‘Back to the drawing table—I have work to do here!’”

To get better, Paul kept experimenting, trying different techniques. In the winery, he began leaving the fermenting grapes in contact with the skin for a longer time, and aged the wines longer—up to 36 months. Then he backed off that, and focused on aging the wines in 100% new French oak, which tends to impart more flavor than older barrels. He says he learned the concentrated fruit in Quilceda Creek’s grapes could handle it, providing a “frame” to the “art” of the wine itself.

In the vineyard, Paul, who today is the producer’s president and director of winemaking, has focused on decreasing grape yields and increasing the efficiency of the properties. Recently, he oversaw replanting of 21 acres of the Quilceda Creek’s nearly 134 acres in the Champoux Vineyards in the Horse Heaven Hills appellation of south-central Washington to a higher density—with 43,500 vines planted by hand.

In the winery, the grapes are initially placed in one of 65 thermally regulated stainless-steel tanks according to the vineyard blocks where they were sourced, allowing distinct flavors to develop. Any tank of wine that isn’t perfect is relegated to create the winery’s Columbia Valley Red, known as CVR—a wine most folks would describe as extremely good but is considered “declassified” from Quilceda Creek’s top echelon.

MORE: Should You Hire a Chauffeur?

Paul has also zeroed in on specific clones of Cabernet Sauvignon, surfacing their distinct characteristics. This perfectionism extends to the wines as grapes from these singular clones are aged in barrels selected as “the most complementary to that clone and its profile,” Paul says.

Quilceda Creek’s Tchelistcheff Cabernet Sauvignon Clone 412, Mach One Vineyard—named for Paul’s great uncle—is currently produced only from “clone 412,” grown above the Columbia River in Horse Heaven Hills. Only about 250 cases of this wine are made annually. The 2021 vintage is a beautiful homage to Paul’s uncle—with integrated tannins, concentrated black fruit, and hints of herbs and spices.

All of these elements—the block-by-block fermentation, the precise clone selection, the high-density planting, plus minimal intervention in the winery—add up to highly regarded, powerful yet elegant wines such as Tchelistcheff. They are full of complexity and layers of flavors.

Quilceda Creek only produces Cabernet Sauvignon. Today, it makes five wines, distinguished by the vineyards and the clones that are their source.

MORE: Sea Salt Is Shaking up High-End Dining

Aside from the flagship Columbia Valley Cabernet Sauvignon (produced from the Champoux and Mach One vineyards) and Tchelistcheff, the top wines include Galitzine Vineyard, which references the Russian spelling of the family name. Galitzine is sourced from clone 8 in the Red Mountain appellation, slightly northeast from Horse Heaven Hills. The fourth is the single-vineyard Palengat, which is located in the larger Mach One vineyard, and sourced solely from clone 685. The wine carries Jeannette’s maiden name.

These four bottles sell for US$250 each. The declassified CVR (blended with some Merlot and Cabernet Franc) is US$80. But, here’s the bad news: Only the flagship Columbia Valley bottling is available nationally and in Asia and the U.K. The rest are distributed to members, at lower pre-release prices (about US$160 for the premier bottles). There is currently a two-year waiting list to join.

Today, Paul oversees a team that includes winemaker Mark Kaigas—formerly the associate winemaker of Napa Valley star Colgin Cellars—viticulturist Dan Nickolaus, and general manager Scott Lloyd, among others.

Though the prices of the wines they make certainly aren’t cheap, they are generally less than prices of the top Napa Valley Cabernets (which can stretch to US$1,000 on release for Screaming Eagle Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville), and are meant for drinking—not as a collectible investment.

The idea is “to have people fall in love with it, and be advocates for the winery,” Paul says. “If you’re having a really great bottle of wine and you get down to the bottom of it and you want more … Well, you’re doing something right.”