WTN: 2009 DeLille

One of our favorite local restaurants always has some DeLille on their list, but I've never quite been able to bring myself to pay the markup to try it, so when some bottles from 2008-2010 came up for sale at a much more reasonable price, I grabbed a few. With a little advice from Jenise (thanks!), I put a DeLille Cellars 2009 Red Mountain "Harrison Hill" in the queue to try soon, on the theory that it was the warmest of those vintages and likely to show best young. Finally opened it last night, with a great, simple dish Andrea improvised of farro with a little sausage, ramps, wilted dandelion greens, balsamic, and deeply toasted pine nuts.

For the first hour, it was very pleasant but also reticent: floral nose; sweet, quite ripe cherry and blackberry fruit up front on the palate, not a lot of midpalate complexity, and a green streak (!) as well as significant but also very smooth tannins on the finish. Thereafter, it really opened up and came into its own, with the midpalate fleshing out and becoming deeper-toned, licorice notes emerging on the finish, the green streak fading into the far background. This bottle was 14.8% abv and it but seemed quite balanced, and the whole thing came together into a seamless and satisfying whole. As this was the vintage that I would have expected to be least my style, I'm pretty happy! I expect this to develop well over the next decade, and I won't touch my second bottle of this for at least 5 years.

We don't drink a ton of Washington wine, but I must say that our luck with the bottles we have had has been awfully good. Maybe we should push our luck.

[Jenise]

For all that I live here, I don't on the whole drink much Washington wines because too few are made in the style I prefer. I don't hate new world wines, I just dislike high alcohol and sappy fruit. That green note suggests that you caught this '09 in a bit of a slump--but the good kind for people like us who prefer restraint. Winemaker Chris Upchurch has started his own brand, btw, Upchurch, which gains complexity from more clones (including several French clones) than the typical Washington Cabernet. It's some of the best stuff made in this state, should you ever see one lying about.

Thanks, Jenise -- I hadn't heard of Upchurch, but will watch for it. I don't think getting on their mailing list in time for the 2015 release is necessarily the way to go, given the description of that vintage as "set the controls for the heart of the sun..."

[Jenise]

15's apparently a weird vintage, allright. The whites I've had so far have been disappointing. I don't pay much attention to insider stuff but certainly I haven't been hearing any raves. Haven't had any reds yet. Wasn't a hot vintage like 09 or a fleshy high yield year like 12, nor was it I don't think a cool vintage like 2011 (of which I liked so many, even if the bankers didn't).

Interesting: you've prompted me to go back and re-read a couple of vintage reports on 2015 and it sounds like, while it was freakishly hot in terms of degree days, it was also hot *early*, which made it possible to pick early, too, before jamminess and overripe flavors set in. It also sounds like a lot of winemakers up there are figuring out how to preserve balance and freshness under these conditions -- including Upchurch, who's quoted as saying that he doesn't worry about letting fruit hang to get "tannin ripeness" but picks as soon as the greenness is gone.