No Girls
No Girls
There's a wine label in Washington's Walla Walla Valley whose name raises eyebrows before you even taste what's in the bottle. No Girls. It sounds like the sign on a teenage treehouse. But the story behind it is genuinely good.
In 2002, Christophe Baron, the French vigneron who founded the acclaimed Cayuse Vineyards, bought a building in downtown Walla Walla. When he walked in for the first time, the place felt like a time capsule. The building had once been a bordello, a common fixture in the Wild West days of the region. At the top of a wide flight of stairs, the words "No Girls" were still painted on the wall, left over from the 1960s. The wine label is an actual photograph of that wall.
No Girls started as a side project. Baron and Cayuse general manager Trevor Dorland launched it as a one-time collaboration, but as the project grew, more Cayuse employees joined, including assistant vigneronne Elizabeth Bourcier and controller Nancy Nestler. Benchmark Wine Group The first vintage was 2008. It was never supposed to be more than that, but the wines were too good to stop.
Read moreThe vineyard and terroir
The La Paciencia vineyard was planted between 2003 and 2005, and the first few harvests from this vineyard were declassified, hence the name, which means ‘patience’ in Spanish. It took ten years from the initial idea to the wine being ready for bottling and sale.
The vines are planted close together and at an angle, giving No Girls a completely unique character. The vineyard is located in a place locals call ‘The Rocks’ — the stony, rocky soil of the Wallawalla Valley.
La Paciencia is located in the Stones area of Wallawalla, an ancient alluvial fan at the foot of the Blue Mountains, with challenging growing conditions. The stony soils force the vines to dig deep into the ground, creating the mineral-rich flavour which is a signature of the wines.
Grapes in wines from No Girls
No Girls focuses on Rhône varieties. The La Paciencia Vineyard was planted with Grenache, Syrah, and Tempranillo, three acres each. The No Girls assortment includes single-varietal bottlings of each, plus a blend called Double Lucky 8, whose exact composition is described on the label only as a "super double secret probation proprietary blend."
Winemaking and the wines
The wines are produced by Karen Gasparotti, Resident Vigneronne for Cayuse Vineyards, who co-produced the first vintage with Baron in 2008. Elizabeth Bourcier had full creative control from the 2011 vintage onward. The approach follows Cayuse's biodynamic farming philosophy, and winemaking stays hands-off enough to let the stony terroir come through. The Grenache, for instance, is aged in a combination of neutral oak and stainless steel to preserve freshness. French oak, when used, is kept to a minimum.
The scores have been hard to ignore. Wine Spectator called the 2009 vintage "some of the best Washington wines ever rated" by the magazine. Individual bottlings regularly hit the mid-90s. The Tempranillo in particular has earned a cult following, critics have called it one of the most distinctive examples of the grape in North America.
Getting your hands on a bottle is another matter. No Girls is sold almost exclusively through a mailing list, and the wait list is real.
