Review: Wines of Sealionne, Winter 2025 Releases
A remarkable thing about Oregon-based Sealionne — pertinent but wine-adjacent: how low-key yet highly functional their website is for a brand in 2025. It conveys only the most minimal of information without extravagant pageantry customarily found on branded wine websites. There are no long, drawn-out narratives or timelines about family history, or terroir. Absent are carefully crafted PR-firm-approved texts designed to bump page rankings.
However, if you are curious enough, it’s rather easy to sleuth and discover Sealionne is a sub-label of the venerable Privé Vineyard, the brainchild of husband-and-wife team Piper Rosales-Underbrink and Ben Stalker. The label name emanates from a boat trip the two took on a 1925 SeaLyon boat back in 2021. So today, Sealionne and, by extension, Privé, make their Drinkhacker debut with a Pinot Noir, Syrah and Viognier. Let us taste the adventure.
2022 Sealionne Kilig Ribbon Ridge Pinot Noir – Nuanced, lively red fruit aromas deliver a beautiful overture of dark red fruit before allowing notes of cedar, tea leaf and violets to surface. A pinch of dried sage adds subtly while also elevating the dark cherry and raspberry notes that take hold on the palate. It’s so easy to get lost in this, and it would easily hold its own against some of the big giants of not only the region, but the country. I wish this in hand before the publication of our 2025 Pinot Noir Thanksgiving feature. Its inclusion would have been an absolute no-brainer. A / $45
2022 Sealionne Lvtetia Walla Walla Syrah – One for the history buffs: Lvtetia was a settlement conquered by the Romans in the first century BC in an area of the world now known as Paris. Unsurprisingly, Lvtetia channels Saint-Joseph with an assertive, Rhone-like swagger. Layers of blueberry and blackberry and a touch of rosemary lead up to a gentle, balanced core of dark fruit and black tea, framed by brisk acidity and grippy tannins. It undulates in waves of dark fruit and spice before settling into a lingering finish of chocolate and the faintest tone of blackberry. Spending hours with this with a cheese plate (Parmigiano Reggiano, Gouda, Asiago), admiring its evolution with the influence of air and time, is not out of the question. A- / $50
2024 Sealionne Dali Walla Walla Viognier – Incredibly approachable, packed with aromas of strawberries, guava, cut grass, and a touch of wet slate, initially focusing on the fruit, but gradually shifting to a balance between fruity and earthy. The acidity on the palate is gentle, helping to guide lime zest and grilled lemon along gently, with the grassy note returning to add a bit of richness. Light salinity appears on the finish, tying everything together clean and confidently. Nothing here feels overthought. It’s simple, well-built and welcoming: an ideal companion for an unhurried afternoon on the couch with that stack of magazines you’ve been meaning to read. A- / $40
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