NV Result of a Crush Red Table Wine

Hello friends. If you saw this bottle sitting on a retail shelf, you would never know. You would look at the label. You would see the smooching red lips, you would notice the lack of vintage, and you would think: okay, there is some cheerful, easy-drinking juice inside. You would see “Red Table Wine” and you would wonder: Merlot? Sangiovese? Lemberger? Perhaps you’d move onto the next bottle on the shelf.

You would do so at your peril.

Because my friends, despite all outward appearances, this is something special: a gateway-drug wine, a gateway into the gloriously funky world of Reynvaan.

Long term members of our list know that our allocations of Reynvaan wines have been getting more and more competitive over the years. And it’s only going to get worse. The June 30 Wine Spectator includes a set of glowing reviews from Harvey Steiman for Reynvaan’s 2010s (we offered them last August; they’re all long-since sold out), culminating in a 98pt score for Stonessence, the highest score Spectator has bestowed on any Washington wine. Ever. Yikes.

Reynvaan is as buzzy as a winery gets in Washington State, and if you’re not already on the waiting list, get on there now. But in the meantime, for all of us who are waiting, or underallocated, or sold out, there is this little gem, this gift from the Reynvaan family.

And Result of a Crush is indeed a family affair. From the winery: “Result of a Crush is a new Walla Walla winery started by Amanda Reynvaan and Angela Reynvaan Garratt, sisters of consulting winemaker Matt Reynvaan. We want to make a wine that is both affordable and distinctive. Our goal is to produce wines that are consistent in quality, but also reflect our sometimes whimsical attitude towards wine.”

So far so good!

Now, because I’m a freak who can’t leave well enough alone and just enjoy the wine for its funky splendor and needs to know everything about everything all the time, I harried and hassled and beseeched Matt Reynvaan for more information about this bottle. And I got a little:

1. The wine is primarily Syrah.
2. It consists of “a few vintages.”
3. It contains a big chunk of declassified Reynvaan barrels.
4. It is rounded out with juice “from special places around the valley that I think work for this particular style I created for my sisters.”

I could have told you #1 and #3 from the minute I sniffed this one. As soon as I got within three feet of the glass after pouring this, I thought: “this is from the rocks.” Those notes are impossible to miss: a mélange of meats – smoked sausage and charcuterie and porchetta – mixed with violets and layers of lovely fruit: blueberry and black cherry, along with exotics like pineapple and guava. The palate is a swirling mass of blue fruits, sanguine bloody notes, minerals, loads of meat and brine: it’s everything we love about Syrah from this incredible part of the Walla Walla Valley.

Speaking to #2, if I had to guess, I’d guess it’s primarily 2010 vintage, fleshed out with a small amount of the warmer 2009 vintage. But that’s just a guess. And ultimately it doesn’t matter if a little mystery remains; not when a wine is this complex, this expressive, this funky. First come first served up to 24 bottles, and we’ll do our best to fulfill all requests. The wine should arrive in about a week, at which point it will be ready for pickup or shipping during the next temperature-appropriate shipping window.