2005 Justin Justification

Sara's parents came to visit us in Palo Alto. Sara made a cassoulet the first night they were here (which was excellent) and I wanted to open a nicer bottle to go along with it. You can see for yourself in the picture below that we enjoyed the wine.



The wine is a great blend of 64% Cabernet Franc and 36% Merlot. The wine was still young, with the some pretty recognizable vanilla flavors in it that will fade over time. The tannins were tame and it wasn't acidic at all; the wine was smooth and complex with a fairly short finish. It is a good drinking wine that goes great with home cooking. Now I can not decide if I like it or Isosceles better.

If that is the only difficult decision I have to make, I guess things are going pretty well.

2004 Chester-Kidder Columbia Valley Red Wine

The Longshadows wines really are some of the best you can get from Washington. They are also, in my opinion, generally over priced. However, they are less overpriced then their Napa brethren. So if you can afford them, buy them; they do not disappoint. Many are also collectables, so get them while you can.

For my father-in-law's birthday, we opened the 2004 Chester-Kidder. It's a $50 wine. It is a well-made and reasonably complex Bordeaux blend with the addition of syrah into the mix as well. It is not some ridiculous tannin-bomb--it is well balanced with good acidity and supple tannins. It is not a fruit-bomb either--in fact, I give it a few marks off for not having much of a flavor at all. This wine seems much more European in its make than most Washington and California wines. It was a deep purple, but the kind that you can see right through. Medium-bodied they call it. It had a fairly good finish and was pleasant enough to drink. However, I would not consider it a showcase wine. This is a food wine. Drink it by itself and you will not remember it much. Drink it with the right food, and I think it will be spectacular. Furthermore, I am going to let it sit in the bottle for another year before opening one again. There is so much going on with the blend, I hope another year will give it a chance to find itself.

The Fourth of July

We spent the Fourth in Edmonds with Sara's family. We had two great red wines.

The first is one I brought, the 2003 Worthy Sophie's Cuvee. This is a Bordeaux-style blend from Napa. This is a well-made blend in the California tradition. The wine had plenty of body and good tasting fruit. It wasn't a huge wine, but it wasn't without it's complexities either. You could smell the wine from a good six feet away after opening the bottle and it was quite nice in the glass. This was a $40 wine that got marked down to $20 which is when I bought it from Garagiste. Apparently it got a few bad reviews... but I don't see why. From the texture to the smell, this is everything you could want in a new-world style wine.

The second wine was the 2003 Cayuse Camaspelo, which is another Cabernet Sauvignon blend. It's just a great wine. Good bits of Oak and the distinct taste of Washington soil. It was a medium bodied wine with nice dark color. This is the lowest scoring of the Cayuse wines, but if I could find enough bottles I would drink it every night.

2000 DeLille Chaleur Estate

Not to be outdone by his brother-in-law, Sara's uncle brought a bottle of the 2000 DeLille Chaleur Estate to help celebrate Sara's mother's birthday. The winery that Parker so famously dubbed "the Lafite-Rothschild of Washington," DeLille has never let me down and this was no exception. For a Bordeaux-style blend of Cab, Merlot and Cab Franc, the wine comes out very dark in the glass (which I like). Fruit-forward and a good finish. Definitely a wine that deserves to be drank with food. I can't say enough good stuff about Delille.

My first experience with Delille was St. Valentine's day last year. Sara and I had a bottle of the 1999 Delille Doyenne Syrah with dinner. This turned out to be the perfect wine to drink with Ragu of Wild Boar. My next experience was the D2, simply because it is affordable and it lived up to the expectations the Doyenne set.

You know, when I pay off my student loans, I may just join their wine club.