Is it worth it to bring your own wine to dinner?

I always fear a restaurant will judge me as “cheap” or as “lame” for bringing my own wine.

If I was heading to a restaurant with an in-depth and carefully selected wine list I normally wouldn’t likely my own wine. Great restaurants carefully craft their menu and wine list to go together like peanut butter and jelly. Why would I dare try and accidentally shove some marmalade in my dinner? You’d call me crazy!

But last night I broke from convention and I absolutely CRUSHED it with my decision to bring wine to dinner.

Maybe that was because it was a trio of the following:
– 1999 Nicolas Feuilleatte Palmes D’Or champagne
– 2004 Corliss Red Bordeaux Blend
– 2009 DeBiase Wines Fritschen Vineyards Pinot Noir

I was anxious for usurping the wine list at Eva Restaurant & Wine Bar with my choices, but I wanted to truly celebrate my amazing wife’s birthday with some memorable wine.

For starters – the ’99 Palmes D’Or was the same bottle we drank to celebrate our engagement when I moved to join Sara in England. And by the way I flew that bottle with me from Seattle to London.

Then the ’04 Corliss is one of the first bottles from Walla Walla that we enjoyed together on our first trip out for tasting. The bottle was part of one of my top five dinners ever at Whitehouse Crawford. And this vintage is drinking beautifully right now.

Then the ’09 DeBiase is from one of our favorite trips to Napa/Sonoma when we stayed in Healdsburg. This bottle was part of our dinner at BarnDiva where the lamb we ate was raised on the same land where the grapes were grown for our wine. A full-circle dinner if I’ve ever had one.

But my choices paired masterfully with our dinner of hanger steak, rack of lamb and pork with white beans.

Don’t be afraid to bring your favorite bottles to celebrate and be pleasantly surprised when they go smashingly with your dinner too.

Wine is meant to enjoy! And birthdays for amazing people are great reasons to enjoy them!