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.

2004 Delille D2

The Lafite-Rothschild of Washington State. Every wine I've had by Delille I've liked a lot. The Doyenne will always have a special place in my heart as one of the great Syrah's I've had. However it is the D2 that we had with dinner last night. We did the prix fix dinner at Cafe Juanita, which included quite a range of food--beef tongue, fois gras, veal, duck... so it was hard to pick a wine. The D2 is Delille's second bottling of their Bordeaux blend. It's a great all-around wine and most restaurants around here have it for about $65 making it relatively affordable.

The prix fix menu was a 10 course meal, but our waiter somehow managed to skip a course for us. In return he comp'd us a bottle of some Italian wine that I neglected to remember. It was nice, and a good wine, but we had to drive home, so we barely made a dent in it.