Lachini at Whole Foods
Every month or so, I swing by the Bellevue Whole Foods store. It’s frustrating: Part of me dislikes the chain store approach to shopping. Another part of me likes only this one type of provolone that only Whole Foods produces. Yet another part of me, my better half if you will, is able to eat only turkey on sandwiches and Whole Foods has the best natural turkey lunchmeat.
To quote Grace Jones, I’m a slave to the rhythm of Whole Foods’ products.
The Bellevue location has a wine buyer whose taste is excellent. This is the store where I have found Alexandria Nicole Lemberger long after the winery had sold out of their 55 cases. The same store had 2004 Hirsch Pinot Noir, albeit for $60.
Well, today I found something I really wanted: 2004 Lachini Ana Vineyard Pinot Noir. Now that’s something I’ll buy! I was looking online for this wine but couldn’t find too many cost-effective options. And with temperatures hovering around 7 Kelvin here in Seattle this week I didn’t want to risk any wine shipments. I’d hate to get a box of broken glass and frozen wine.
A few things of note with regard to the 2004 Ana Vineyard release compared to the 2005:
- 2004 was the first release of this wine.
- The alcohol content is much higher than the 2005 (14.4% vs. 13.4%). This difference is a little confusing since they picked the grapes much earlier in 2004 than in 2005.
- The label is slightly different from the 2005. Yes, that’s really useless information.
As I picked out a bottle of this wine (they had 4 bottles on display at $43.99 each), one of the wine department specialists came over and we talked for a bit. I left her with the strong impression that she should try the Lachini wines. I also learned that Casey is the name of the guy with the great wine selection taste at the Bellevue Whole Foods. I’m thinking about contacting him for an interview at some point for this blog; I would love to learn more about how a bottle of 2004 Hirsch shows up in a Bellevue grocery store.
Finally, I saw this review of the 2005 Lachini Pinot Gris today. Apparently the Lachini release is the class of its Oregon brethren. Too bad it’s sold out!