D TO THE L

Jesse reports in on dinner with an LD alum...

D TO THE L

I had dinner at David Lazarus’ house last week and was lucky enough to taste some pretty fantastic wines along with getting my Labrador fill (which is well needed since my Lab, Mia passed away recently). Mia was somewhat pretentious and picky about her dog food along with having an incredible nose for good wine. Okay, so I’m making that part up but she was a wonderful fishing/canoeing/going everywhere with me buddy.

David recently purchased a collection of Long Shadow wines and had them opened for an hour before I arrived. Among them he had the 2004 Chester-Kidder and 2005 Pirouette. The Long Shadow Group is a personal wine adventure of Allen Shoup, retired CEO of Stemson Lane Wine Group (Chateau St. Michelle, Columbia Crest and others). His personal dream was to start is own wine venture with other renowned wine makers around the world. The goal was to bring their expertise to the Columbia Valley AVA. It not only worked, but was simply brilliant.

The purpose of creating Chester-Kidder, by winemaker Gilles Nicault, was to showcase two outstanding varietals of Columbia Valley: Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah. The wine opened up beautifully with well-integrated tannins and intense complexity. It was obvious the wine could lie down for several years.

The Pirouette, created by Phillipe Melka and Agustin Huneeus, presents an old world style of wine using new world technology. They used most of the red Bordeaux varietals and threw in a bit of syrah for good measure. The Pirouette was definitely old school/world with its earthy, leather, licorice goodness. Again, throw it down for a few years and it will be a beauty!

For those of you who may not know him, David Lazarus used to be a part of our wine staff team here at LD but has since moved on. I miss our daily ritual of walking around the store together as soon as I started my shift and telling me about the wines he tried while educating me like crazy. I feel slightly bad about bringing a dish to his house that consisted of predominately onions when he hates them. He ate them anyways…