Steele Shooting Star Aligote 1999

Aligoté is a variety which is little known but widely planted. It is in fact the fourth most planted wine grape variety in the world. Huge plantings dominate Eastern Europe, Ukraine, and Moldavia. In France it is the other white grape in Burgundy. Restricted to either the tops of hills or the colder valley locations. In Burgundy, Aligoté always takes second to Chardonnay. It is because this variety is more cold tolerant and makes good but neutral wine that it was never planted in any commercial quantity in California. It was Washington State where cold winters are a fact of life that Aligoté has found a home. The Newhouse family has farmed the land south of Sunnyside Washington for generations. They were some of the first wine grape growers and were always experimenting. They planted two acres of Aligoté in the 1970's and these grapes were made into varietal wine by one Washington winery for many years. For a time it even outsold the winery's Chardonnay. When the boom for Chardonnay took hold in the late 1980's the sales of Aligoté declined and eventually the grapes were blended into the Chardonnay. Here at Steele we have always had a fascination for good but under appreciated grapes. We use our Shooting Star label to allow us to make wines from these grapes. This gives us a chance to make and sell these eclectic varieties and to keep the faith and make wines, which are appealing and moderately priced. We barrel fermented the juice but used older oak barrels rather than the 30% new oak that we typically use for Chardonnay. The wine is crisp and clean, a wonderful food wine and one which should be very versatile.