Winemaker Notes
#63 of Wine Spectator's Top 100 of 2020
The 2017 D2 offers abundant dried cranberry and raspberry aromas surging from the glass, with intertwined darker fruits notes of cassis, blueberry, and blackberry. Delicately balanced oak influence contributes cocoa and coffee bean notes while remaining completely respectful of the fruit. This appealing wine is vibrant and extraordinarily fresh on the palate, with persistent fruit flavors of pomegranate and blueberry. Understated and subtle tannin provides welcome structure, while excellent early integration offers accessibility, generosity, and abundant pleasure despite the wine’s youth.
Blend: 66% Merlot, 29% Cabernet Sauvignon, 3% Cabernet Franc, 2% Petit Verdot
A beautiful partner for lean meats such as flank steak or bison, anything BBQ and lighter meats such as chicken. Brie or soft-ripened cheeses are also a wonderful match.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Opens with supple and expressive red currant, green olive and clove flavors, then shifts gears and takes on increasingly muscular yet polished tannins on the long finish. Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
A blend of 66% Merlot, 29% Cabernet Sauvignon, 3% Cabernet Franc and 2% Petit Verdot, the 2017 D2 Proprietary Red Wine opens to a nose of dusty plum, silky cherry skin and black raspberry before showing hints of baking spice, dusty flower petals and baked earth. Medium to full-bodied, the wine is expressive and balanced across the mid-palate with lifting tannins and energetic acidity to make it food-friendly. Lingering flavors of cedar and sage persist in the mouth, as the wine stretches its legs on the winding finish, highlighting the red berry frame. D2 has always been a crowdpleaser, and the 2017 bottling continues that winning streak. The wine spent 20 months in French oak barrels (68% new) and then rested in bottle for eight months.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2017 DeLille Cellars offers an excellent look into Bordeaux grape varieties' potential as grown in the Columbia Valley. TASTING NOTES: This wine brings elegant aromas and flavors of ripe fruit, savory spices, and a trace of oak. Enjoy it with grilled, bone-in chicken thighs in a mix of savory spices. (Tasted: November 2, 2020, San Francisco, CA)
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Jeb Dunnuck
The largest production cuvée from Delille, the D2 is named after the D2 highway that runs from the town of Bordeaux up into the Médoc. It’s always a quality wine, and the 2017 D2 sports a deep purple/ruby color as well as Bordeaux-like notes of cedary herbs, lead pencil, tobacco, damp earth, and blackberries. Medium-bodied, balanced, and silky, it’s unquestionably an outstanding wine that has a decade (or more) of prime drinking ahead of it.
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Wine & Spirits
D2 blends about two-thirds merlot with 30 percent cabernet sauvignon and a few dollops of cabernet franc and petit verdot. It’s bright and chewy, scented with briar, tobacco leaf and cherry, with a velvety texture and the flesh to get around a lamb chop.
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
A large and geographically diverse AVA capable of producing a wide variety of wine styles, the Columbia Valley AVA is home to 99% of Washington state’s total vineyard area. A small section of the AVA even extends into northern Oregon!
Because of its size, it is necessarily divided into several distinctive sub-AVAs, including Walla Walla Valley and Yakima Valley—which are both further split into smaller, noteworthy appellations. A region this size will of course have varied microclimates, but on the whole it experiences extreme winters and long, hot, dry summers. Frost is a common risk during winter and spring. The towering Cascade mountain range creates a rain shadow, keeping the valley relatively rain-free throughout the entire year, necessitating irrigation from the Columbia River. The lack of humidity combined with sandy soils allows for vines to be grown on their own rootstock, as phylloxera is not a serious concern.
Red wines make up the majority of production in the Columbia Valley. Cabernet Sauvignon is the dominant variety here, where it produces wines with a pleasant balance of dark fruit and herbs. Wines made from Merlot are typically supple, with sweet red fruit and sometimes a hint of chocolate or mint. Syrah tends to be savory and Old-World-leaning, with a wide range of possible fruit flavors and plenty of spice. The most planted white varieties are Chardonnay and Riesling. These range in style from citrus and green apple dominant in cooler sites, to riper, fleshier wines with stone fruit flavors coming from the warmer vineyards.