Our take
Barnard Griffin Rob's Red Blend Washington Red Wine
- Style
- Red wine
- Size
- 750 ml
- Region
- Washington State
- Shelf barcode
- 0096925000171
Our take
What we make of this bottle
This red blend carries a person's name, Rob's Red Blend, and the producer's own tech sheet gives the grapes behind it: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah, though it does not publish the exact percentage of each. Grape guides describe that trio as a common Washington pairing, Cabernet's structure and dark fruit rounded out by Merlot's softer tannin and Syrah's peppery lift. The label names Washington State rather than one district; our Washington research places most of the state's vineyards east of the Cascade Range, where the mountains hold back the Pacific's rain and the growing season runs to warm days, cool nights and real winter frost risk.
The tech sheet for the current, 2023 vintage names three source vineyards: Black Rock Vineyard and Lonesome Spring Ranch in the Yakima Valley, and Gunkel Vineyard, which the tech sheet places in the Columbia Valley. Barnard Griffin's own general vineyards page, though, places Gunkel Vineyard in the Columbia Gorge AVA instead, a real discrepancy between the winery's two pages that we have not resolved. That same page adds that Gunkel sits on a south-facing slope along the Columbia River and grows Petit Verdot, Syrah, Roussanne, Viognier, Zinfandel and Barbera; Black Rock Vineyard does not appear on that page's list of named sites at all.
On the winemaking, the tech sheet is specific: the finished wine runs 13.8 percent alcohol from a 2023 harvest of 4,500 cases, aged sixteen months total, 85 percent of it in oak tanks and 15 percent in barrique, a tenth of that barrique new French oak, with 2.5 grams of residual sugar per litre, in plain terms a dry wine. The vintage notes are signed by Rob Griffin, the winery's founding winemaker, and Megan Hughes, its second-generation winemaker; Barnard Griffin's own history page says Rob and Deborah Barnard started the winery in 1983 with a small truckload of borrowed fruit and a rented cellar, four years after Rob arrived in Washington as a 24-year-old UC Davis graduate. We do not have a shopper rating for this wine. In our August 2026 checks its regular price was $16.99.
Our call: this suits a shopper who wants real numbers behind a family-run Washington blend, a stated alcohol level, oak treatment and case count from the tech sheet, plus more than forty years of the same family's name on the label. Pass if you want the exact blend percentages or a rating history to lean on; Barnard Griffin states the three grapes but not the split between them, its own two vineyard pages disagree on which AVA Gunkel Vineyard sits in, and no shopper rating has reached our record yet.
The Grocery Store Wine Desk · written Aug 17, 2026 from our research file for this wine. Numbers reflect our latest checks.
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Read our take →The price we checked
Dated store checks, not a promise about your store.
- Store listing$16.99
The regular price can vary by store and date.
From the producer
Founding and founders
Barnard Griffin says the winery began in 1983 with borrowed grapes and a rented cellar as the dream of founders Deborah Barnard and Rob Griffin, and its site places the winery in Richland, Washington.
Research status
What we are still checking
Our overview above draws on the dated store feed, shopper ratings, our region and grape research, and any sourced producer facts. We are still working to confirm the current release, the full producer record, and the bottle itself, and we update this page as we learn more.
Getting to know Washington State.
A Washington label can point to a large state blend or to a narrower AVA. Most vineyards are east of the Cascade Range, but the exact AVA still matters because elevation, wind, rain and frost exposure change across the state.
What the name means
Washington is a state origin, not one American Viticultural Area. Its wine regions include 21 federally recognized AVAs, some shared with Oregon.
How grapes grow here
The Cascade Range blocks much of the Pacific rain from eastern Washington. That creates generally dry growing conditions with warm summer days, cool nights and winter frost risk, while western sites have stronger marine influence.
What lies under the vines
Flood deposits, windblown silt, sand, gravel and volcanic material occur across Washington wine country. A state name alone does not identify one soil or vineyard setting.
How large the region is
- Recognized AVAs
- 21 wine-growing areas are listed by the Washington State Wine Commission.
- Label resolution
- Washington State is broader than an AVA, so the bottle or producer must establish a more specific place.
Places within the region
- Columbia Valley
- A very large AVA that contains many of Washington's smaller wine regions and crosses into Oregon.
- Yakima Valley and Walla Walla Valley
- Two established AVAs within the broader eastern Washington landscape, each with its own boundaries and local conditions.
Where this information comes from
- Store listing
- Price, package, product identifier. Checked Aug 14, 2026.
- Barcode
- The shelf barcode shown here is computed from the store product identifier. It has not been checked against a bottle.
- Method
- Every price, rating and fact here is a dated observation. How we check.