Where in Washington is this winery you ask? Nope, we finally stepped out of Washington. Quady North can be found in Oregon’s Applegate Valley. The Applegate Valley AVA is a nested AVA within the Rogue Valley AVA. This region is way south in Oregon, just above the California state line. In the State of Jefferson…well that’s a story for another day.

We discovered Quady North when we were speaking with Leah Jörgensen a couple of years ago. She pulls Cabernet Franc from his Mae’s Vineyard and spoke highly of Herb Quady. So when we were visiting the Applegate Valley this past summer, we stopped in and met Herb at the vineyard. You can see a bit of our visit in The Scenic Route Part 8 – Johan and Quady North .

Herb Quady

Herb comes from a wine family. Quady is known in Central California for their sweet wines. Then he fell in love with Rhônes and headed North to Southern Oregon, convinced this was the perfect place to grow those varieties.

Cabernet Franc is not a Rhône variety, but Leah had spoken so highly of his Cab Franc…so…

Quady North 2014 Cabernet Franc

Most of the Cab Franc for this wine comes from Mae’s Vineyard, named for his daughter which they planted in 2006. We walked the vineyard with him when we visited. The views from the vineyard are pretty spectacular.

2014 is one of our best vintages to date.  It was warm and even with good set in the vineyard. In the winery, we took advantage of our new facility to improve our winemaking with gentler handling and reduced exposure to oxygen.  The result is a vibrant, balanced Franc with notes of loam and red pepper.

QuadyNorth.com

He goes on to give lots of wonderful geeky notes about fruit handling, aging, lees stirring etc…you should visit his site if you are into those. The wine sits at 14.3% abv and runs $35.00 per bottle.

The Tasting

I found this wine to be medium intensity with notes of earth, coffee, black cherry and red pepper, plus there was a bit of spice on the nose. I am a Cab Franc lover and this wine has found it’s way into my heart. (much like that corkscrew on the label).

The Pairing

While it was suggested that we pair with coffee and ancho chili rubbed skirt steak (which I think would be awesome with this)…that was not in the cards for this evening. We paired with bleu cheese and gouda and with some strips of red pepper (just wanted to see…) and all worked really well. We paired with bbq and some creamy gnocchi and it made for a great dinner.

A little more…

Herb is also exploring other ways to get his wine to the people, other than bottles that is. We did a piece on his canned rosé a while back, and talked with him about cans, bags and kegs when it comes to wine. You can check out that piece here Cans and kegs – packaging sustainability with Quady North

Tomorrow is Day 8!

Can you believe it? We are sailing toward the holiday at high speed! Come back as we pop yet another bottle!

As always be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to keep up to date on all of our posts.