If you’ve read much on this site, you’ll no doubt be aware that Los Vascos is one of our favorite vineyards. At the entry and reserve level, wines from Los Vascos are an excellent value, rivaling significantly more expensive Californian varieties. Le Dix de Los Vascos is the vineyard’s most expensive offering, at slightly over $50 a bottle. This is not an easy bottle of wine to find – even in a large city with high end wine dealers, you’ll be lucky to find a bottle. So if you have the fortune to find one, should you buy it? Absolutely.

Le Dix is one of the most fragrant wines I’ve ever encountered. Richly floral with tobacco and smoke overtones, my sister described the bouquet as, “smelling like something I would really want to eat.”  Produced in limited quantities and oak aged for 18 months, Le Dix certainly exhibits strongly oaked overtones with significant tannins and spice, though perfectly balanced. In short, it is a prototypical cab. Excellent mouth feel, dark fruit flavors, and wonderful body – there’s really nothing bad to say about this wine, but neither is there any one thing that stands out.

What this is really, is an excellently refined Cabernet that isn’t loud or flashy, but rather makes a name for itself in doing what it does well and letting other things take care of themselves. As an analogy, this wine is not a Lamborghini, but rather a Rolls Royce – truly what a great cab should be. It doesn’t shout or make a name for itself by being brash or flashy, but in trying to achieve perfection – and coming quite close in the process.

Score: 96