What is compelling about sherry wine casks is the historical relationship of a wine region to the whiskey business, not necessarily about the flavor of the casks specifically.
Four Under Flor
By Michael Alberty
If patience is a virtue, Viento Wines owner Rich Cushman must be a saint. The veteran winemaker just ended his decade-long wait to turn someone else’s wine into “Fino,” an Oregon take on the iconic Spanish aperitif.
In 2009, a friend of Cushman’s, we’ll call her “Sherry” for the purposes of this column, asked his help turning four barrels of a lightly fortified Sauvignon Blanc-Viognier blend into vermouth. Cushman describes her project as a “custom processing arrangement.”
The barrels resided at Mt. Hood Winery in Hood River, where Cushman makes wine for Viento, Mt. Hood and three other Columbia Gorge wineries. In 2017, “Sherry” said Cushman could do whatever he wished with the barrels. “She had either lost the time, the interest or both,” Cushman recalls.