Our friend Jeff, who also answers to Morrie based on his last name, and his wife Lynette invited us over for dinner last night. Since we had so much fun and since we're kitchen-less for the foreseeable future, they suggested we come again next Tuesday and maybe every Tuesday after that until our remodel's complete. This is a fanstastic kindness, and Jeff has a great cellar so Tuesday is about to become our favorite day of the week.
Last night we started with a 2006 Kestrel Chardonnay. Kestrel is an underappreciated (in my opinion, anyway) Washington producer whose wines always have a more European-like acid balance atypical of most wines made here, and this wine is made from Kestrel's estate vineyard which at 40 years old are some of the oldest chardonnay vines in the state. The wine is uncommonly rich with good acid balance and complexity, and it competes easily with wines that cost twice it's $20 price tag.
With dinner, Jeff poured a 1992 Beaulieu Vineyards Georges Latour Cabernet Sauvignon which is drinking perfectly right now with elegant, nuanced black cherry fruit and sweet caramel tones. A 1993 Arrowood Cabernet followed, much to it's detriment, for it's not nearly the wine the Georges Latour was: the fruit is bigger and rougher and will never achieve the GL's suave profile.
After dinner, though we'd really had enough wine, we went ahead and popped the cork on a 1999 Betz "Famille" Cabernet Sauvignon that I'd brought. Betz is one of Washington's top cabernet producers, and demand for the wine exceeds supply so they're spendy and hard to find. Bob Betz is also a genuine MW (one of two I know of making wine here), and has trained many of this state's up and comers. Anyway, this wine has softened considerably since we last tried a bottle, but it's showing very little in the way of interesting secondary development and has a long ways to go yet. I'll wait at least three years before trying another.