Drink / Hold

"Artist Series" Cabernet Sauvignon
(Scroll to the bottom of the page to get more details on each artist we have worked with)

The Woodward Canyon "Artist Series" began in 1992 with the intent to showcase the finest of Washington State cabernet sauvignon. The vineyards used in the "Artist Series" are some of the oldest and most well-respected in the state of Washington. The label changes every year with work from different, local Pacific Northwest artists. This wine is a heavier-bodied cabernet, with typical aging 10+ years from vintage.

This chart should help guide you on when to open the "Artist Series". Rick believes that most of these will show best with food. These suggestions are meant to serve as a guide. Woodward Canyon cannot guarantee the drinkability of individual bottles as factors outside of the winery's control (including storage and temperature issues) may impact the wine.

For specific questions on any of these wines, please email getthedirt@woodwardcanyon.com.

"Old Vines" Cabernet Sauvignon

The "Old Vines" Cabernet originally started as the "Dedication Series" with the start of the winery in 1981. The label features a pioneer of the Walla Walla Valley and the wine is now sourced primarily from Champoux Vineyard, which is home to some of the oldest cabernet blocks in the state of Washington. This is a heavier-bodied cabernet and will typically age well, with proper cellar conditions, 15+ years from vintage.

Here are some recommendations for drinking or holding the Dedication / "Old Vines" Cabernet. These suggestions are meant to serve as a guide. Woodward Canyon cannot guarantee the drinkability of individual bottles as factors outside of the winery's control (including storage and temperature issues) may impact the wine.

If you have any specific questions about this series, please email getthedirt@woodwardcanyon.com.

Our "Artist Series" Label Artists

1992 Artist Series #1, 13" x 10" commissioned watercolor, 1994, Jennifer Winship Mark, Portland, OR. Jennifer shows at galleries in the Portland area, created a Rose Festival poster that won Best Festival Poster of the Year, sells posters internationally and produces a series of greeting cards. After attending a tasting in Portland, Jennifer contacted Woodward Canyon and offered her services. Unbeknownst to Jennifer, we had been planning a new red wine and were considering a separate label for it. Thus, the "Artist Series" was born.

1993 Artist Series #2 "Moonlight Becomes You", 30" x 36" commissioned pastel, 1995, Elizabeth Harris, Walla Walla, WA. Elizabeth grew up in Walla Walla in one of the three houses that her great--grandfather built. Her early life was deeply rooted in her family's traditions and heirlooms. She attributes the rich colors and patterns, characteristic of her art, to the treasures of her family's past. Harris received her BA from Whitman College, and later a M. F. A. from Portland State University, Portland, Oregon. Elizabeth lived in Portland before returning home to Walla Walla. Her work is represented throughout the United States and in Germany.

1994 Artist Series #3, 23" x 30" watercolor, Divit Cardoza, Boise, ID Divit studied art at the University of Oregon until his parents found out he was wasting time with that "art crap." Consequently, he is mostly self-taught. He started out painting abstractly but began working in realism in the early 80's. Most of his work is of traditional subjects (i.e. landscapes, portraits and still lifes). Divit lives and works (in a wine shop) in Idaho. His work hangs in corporate and private collections across the US and has been shown in California, Idaho, Washington and North Carolina.

1995 Artist Series #4 "Indian Summer II", 39" x 27" watercolor, 1993, Judy D. Treman, Walla Walla, WA. Judy was raised in Walla Walla and returned from Kirkland, Washington in the 1980's. After obtaining a master's degree in sociology with a minor in art, Judy kept busy with marriage and home until age 29 when she began pursuing painting seriously. She focuses on watercolors of large still lifes, filled with color. Judy has earned signature membership in the National Watercolor Society, Watercolor West and the Northwest Watercolor Society. Her paintings are included in Splash 3, Splash 4, Splash 5, and Basic Flower Painting Techniques. She now shares the techniques she has developed in her own book, Building Brilliant Watercolors, published in 1998. Her works can be found in collections and exhibitions throughout the county.

1996 Artist Series #5 "Dream Door #3", 40" x 60" encaustic on paper, 1996, Abbey Grosvenor, Sun Valley, ID. Abby paints because she is compelled to do so. She has done so while raising a family and owning and running a restaurant). It was in college and graduate school that she immersed herself fully in painting and moved to non-representational work. This work's medium of encaustic is a thick wax material, technically pigment suspended in beeswax, which is heated and applied with palette knives.

1997 Artist Series #6 "San Juan Sunrise" 16" x 13" commissioned pastel, Clark Elster, Shoreline, WA. Following a 25-year career as a Seattle police officer, Clark discovered pastels and began painting again in 1984. Raised in central Oregon, his introduction to art was via the Famous Artists Correspondence School, followed by art studies at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Clark's emphasis is on landscapes and marinescapes. His work has appeared in American Artist, and has been featured in regional, juried, invitational and one-man shows. He is a founding signature member of the Northwest Pastel Society. Elster also is the author/illustrator of a 100-page book, Two Americans in Norway.

1998 Artist Series #7, 20" X 25" watercolor, Sally Augustiny Charlton, Chicago, IL. Sally Augustiny Charlton was born in Ohio and studied at the University of Michigan and The Chicago Academy. She was employed for 20 years at the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency in Chicago. Sally was well known in the advertising community for the detail, color and life that she put into her illustrations. In her personal life, she was an accomplished watercolor artist. Sally passed away in 1998 and her good friend, the Art Director for the Auction of Northwest Wines, purchased this piece at her estate sale. It was the centerpiece of the 1998 Auction invitations and catalog and was acquired at that auction.

1999 Artist Series #8, "Runners of Splendor" 40" x 30" commissioned acrylic, 2000, Larry Pirnie, Missoula, MT. Larry Pirnie was born in Waterloo, Iowa. His earliest memory of making a picture was drawing the Lone Ranger when he was six years old. He never stopped making pictures of cowboys and horses. At the time in his life that he was ready to make a decision concerning his art career, he had the good fortune to spend a day with Norman Rockwell at his studio. Rockwell's advice directed Larry to the Pratt Institute in New York, where he earned a BFA degree in 1963. His pictures today have evolved into a more expressive style as he responds to a whimsical mixture of yesterday's fantasies and today's realities. Larry has shown throughout the west in solo and group exhibitions.

2000 Artist Series #9, "Ochre Interior (version 1) 15 3/4" x 12", 2002, Squire Broel, Walla Walla, WA. Squire graduated from Seattle Pacific University with a degree in Studio Art. He then moved to Hong Kong for a year to live and work. Both childhood memories of growing up in rural America and encounters in Asia are fundamental to his current work. Upon moving back to the Northwest, Squire worked at the Walla Walla Foundry as their patineur and bronze coloration specialist for six years. Squire is now focused on his own work full time. He uses his education and knowledge of art history--as well as his experience with bronze coloration--to communicate with each viewer through painting and sculpture the importance of everyday objects, images, and emotions. Squire's bronze tiles also can be seen on the wood-fired oven on the patio behind the tasting room.

2001 Artist Series #10, Untitled (owl) 7" x 6 1/2 ", Frank Boyden, Otis, OR Frank Boyden, a native Portlander, is an internationally renowned potter and sculptor whose parents responded to his interest in art by exposing him to such Northwest artists as Mark Tobey and Morris Graves. As a teenager, Boyden's trips up remote inland rivers led him to discoveries that made him ever after devoted to symbols of ancient cultures. After undergraduate work at Colorado College, Boyden received a M.F.A. at Yale. At that time, in the late '60s, he was a color-field painter. As a potter, he is chiefly self-taught. Soon after returning to the Northwest, he conceived and built the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, a retreat and workshop for artists, and later the Margery Davis Boyden Writer's Residency Program, Frank's pieces appear in collections and galleries across the world. He has completed numerous public commissions. His "Columbia Blade" bronze sculpture can be seen on the lawn in front of our Tasting Room.

2002 Artist Series #11, "Road Through Sleep" 38" x 48", ink on paper, 2003, Ian Boyden, Walla Walla, WA. Ian Boyden is a practicing painter, calligrapher, seal carver, printer, and producer of other objects associated with calligraphy. His seals and calligraphy have been exhibited in China, Taiwan, Korea, and the U.S. Boyden received a B.A. in Art History and East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University and a M.A. in the History of Art at Yale University. Since 1998, Ian has served as the Director of Sheehan Gallery and Lecturer of Art History, Whitman College, Walla Walla. Ian is also the founder and proprietor of Crab Quill Press, a natural extension of his lifelong interests in paper, stones, the printed image, and the calligraphic line.

2003 Artist Series #12, "Boat Houses on Sand Creek" 34" x 25", acrylic, 1993, Aaron Burgess, Walla Walla, WA "I was born in Seattle, Washington in 1956 but I've lived off and on in Walla Walla most of my life. My father, an artist/painter, too, taught me how to draw and introduced me to the GreatMasters. When I was 15 years old, with my parents blessing (and Ivan Illich's!), I decided to quit school and devoted myself to drawing, painting, reading and other studies. The great French painter, Cezanne, in a late letter, asked, "Is art a kind of priesthood where only the most pure of heart are allowed to enter?" Indeed, great works of Art are truly transcendent. Elevated. Profound: The "Winged Victory of Samothrace" and Rembrandt's "Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels" in the Louvre, Cezanne's "Montagne Sant-Victoire" in the Philadelphia Museum. For myself, I continue to study the Great Masters and Nature and try to add a link of my own to the Art of Painting." -- Aaron Burgess

2004 Artist Series #13, "Coming Home: Red-Tailed Hawk" 24" x 30", acrylic, 2006, Todd Telander, Walla Walla, WA. Art and the study of nature have been dual passions for Todd Telander since his childhood in rural Northern California. He began to seriously focus on art and illustration as a career while attending the University of California at Santa Cruz. While earning degrees in Environmental Studies and Biology, he completed a graduate-level program in scientific illustration, and immediately began work as a freelance artist on a national and international level. He has since studied fine art independently and was awarded an artist's residency at Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. For the past 15 years he has made his living as a freelance scientific illustrator and wildlife artist. Telander's work has been published and reproduced for multiple applications, and his clients have included book and magazine publishers, retailers, environmental and educational institutions.

2005 Artist Series #14, "Stop the Blue", 4-29" x 21", oil, Jean Christofori Howton, Hat Rock, OR Jean Christofori Howton is dually located in Oregon and in Normandy, France. Over the years, Jean has produced multitudes of paintings and drawings which are displayed in private collections worldwide. She has developed a reputation through her exhibitions in the US and Europe. Jean has produced a wide variety of subjects from representational to abstract. She has the ability and the skill to manage different types of mediums and subjects. All of her works are the result of soft, yet solid and sensitive inspiration. The evolution from earlier works shows her eagerness to evolve within her own style. The quality and the detail, the richness and subtly of the colors, gives strength to these paintings.

2006 Artist Series #15, "San Gemanimo Rd", 14" x 16", oil on aluminum panel, 2008, Berkley, CA Tyrell is generally influenced by the 17th Century Dutch approach to landscape, and at the same time, has been playing with the suggestion of the etching plate created by her oil-on-aluminum technique. The scenes come from imagination. Though many of the titles are the names of actual places (exits seen from the highway), they are meant to suggest a brief, possible encounter with an unknown place. Reflecting on our subjective experience of the external environment, she explores the territory of her general impressions, memories and imaginings of places passed. As is the case with many painters, much attention and interest are focused on the phenomenon of light. In 2005 she purchased some aluminum panels and immediately discovered that the aluminum provided a wonderful drawing environment. The metal shining through the paint suggested etching plates, and the work itself had an etching-like quality. The surface of the metal provides one big challenge: each painting must be in one sitting. Once the paint has dried, wet paint cannot be added. If it is, the wet paint will remove the dry paint.

2007 Artist Series #16, "The Palouse" 4' x 4', acrylic paint on canvas on panels, 2009, Bainbridge Island, WA, The landscape of Spokane, Washington, where Irene grew up, has always influenced her work. The city is surrounded by pine trees, lakes and a ski mountain. When she left that area at the age of 20, she took these memories with her. At Arizona State University, she earned an MFA in printmaking, then changed media and began working on a six-foot Cranbrook loom. Irene wove many commissioned rugs and tapestries, but eventually became frustrated with the restraints of weaving. She didn't leave fiber arts behind, however, as her current work shows traces of these years working with fiber. After selling her loom, she spent two weeks at Haystack School of Arts and Crafts and began experimenting with new materials and enjoyed the freedom of working on paper, unstretched canvas and wood using layers of silk and acrylic. Living in the intense light of sunny homes in New Mexico and the Turquoise Coast of Turkey for years led her to search for a way to include more luminosity and depth in her pieces. Irene discovered the light-filled, dimensional feeling she wanted by painting images on acrylic sheets and stacking them to make one piece, building complex images with color, pattern and shadow as the light and the viewer's perspective change. In her new work, she is painting with acrylics on top of silk which is permanently adhered to wood. It is a continuation of Irene's interest in layering and creating luminosity by glazing. Her work appears in collections and is shown throughout the U.S.

2008 Artist Series #17, 'Helebores', 1' x 1', Ivory Print, Seattle, WA; Lisa's love of botanical form and education in ornamental horiticulture influence her paintings and mixed media prints. In those works of richly textured layers of paper, ink and paint, flora serves as a metaphor for hope, rebirth, and renewal. Her recent travels to Turkey, as well as a self-directed artist residency at Centrum in Port Townsend, Washington, have rekindled her interest in sense of place and a desire to explore landscape and architecture as well as botanical themes.

2009 Artist Series #18, 'Rushing Falls', 30' x 24', oil on canvas, Seattle, WA; When interpreting a landscape, Jared often tries to find modern perspectives. His work has evolved from painting distant landscapes and underwater landscapes to his current compositions of 'in-the-forest', 'water bank', and 'macro' landscapes. His work, he says, at times leans towards the abstract yet still evokes a transcendent and genuine feeling of being able to enter, or step into, the paintings themselves - whether physically or mentally. The challenge is to create balance and contrast between light and dark, traditional and modern, boldness and serenity while at all times maintaining honesty.