2010 Scarecrow Cabernet Sauvignon

Community Tasting Notes (34) Avg Score: 96.0 points

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  5/19/2022 - Cailles wrote: 94 Points

  Scarecrow - Complete Vertical 2003-2019 + 2x PNV: Non blind. Not decanted. It is obvious, why Scarecrow has the status it has. This is truly one of the very best Napa wines. A few observations: 1) The absolute highlight in almost all vintages is Scarecrow’s ability to combine aromatic density and intensity with absolute weightlessness. Very, very few Napa Valley wines achieve that kind of weightlessness - other than Harlan, probably no other wine that consistently over the vintages. More recent vintages are of course a touch less weightless (due to their youth) but are as light and airy as any wine in the respective vintage. 2) The wines have a lot of substance with a flavor profile with lots of red berries and floral notes complementing the dark Cabernet fruits, always lots of earthy minerality and some herbs and sensuous, luxurious oaky notes reminding me of Cheval Blanc. 3) While probably Bordeaux-esque for Napa standards in its appearance, it is still distinctively a Napa wine. In the early years, I even found a touch too much ripeness and some alcohol heat in the wines which doesn’t seem to be an issue in the vintages of this decade. 4) These wines all are great to drink, only the structured vintages of 2010, 2013 as well as the 2016 were not really open for business and would have needed decanting. All others showed great right out of the bottle.
  
  TN: Ripe but not too ripe nose, young and fresh, the whole fruit spectrum but with a dark core. Same on the palate, perfectly delineated blue and black fruit, a bit younger and with powerful black fruit and hence showing not as much red fruit and floral notes yet. Still a bit bold but beautiful and a very structured structured vintage for Scarecrow (and Napa) where the tannins still need time to fully melt and make the wine as weightless as the other vintages. The potential is great but the wine is not yet there. This is certainly a vintage with a very long life ahead. 94 pts with much more potential.
  
  Decanting: Not decanted. This would have needed a few hours to open up and soften (butter wait a few years).

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  5/12/2022 - G_H wrote: 95 Points

  A complete Scarecrow vertical: It's funny, but with wines as young as 2019, this for me was the only one that was really too young to drink.
  
  A high potential wine with so much power but the tannin structure was so intense that it needs another 5 years before it really delivers that Scarecrow magic. By then it can be amazing

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  2/26/2022 - oldwines Likes this wine: 97 Points

  Brought by a friend to a multi-party birthday (including his own) dinner at a restaurant about 30 minutes from home. Double decanted around 3 pm and brought to the restaurant and redecanted for 30+ minutes before the first taste but mostly consumed around 8-9pm. My first taste was pleasantly balanced and reminded me of Heitz Martha’s Vineyard with its distinct eucalyptus aromas along with graphite and black fruit (cassis and blackberry). Palate showed some tannin and medium acidity with some herbaceous undertones I found quite attractive. For hard-core modern Cab lovers this might be considered an off vintage but I thought it was delicious and more elegant and refined than expected. It did put on more weight and got more robust with time however. I liked it best at about the 3.5-4 hour point. While a nice contrast this was right up there with the 2012 Hanzell Ambassador 1953 chard and 1983 Chateau Margaux. At some points before the Margaux fully evolved I liked this the best of the 3. Close 2nd WOTN.

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  6/5/2021 - EM_MB Likes this wine: 94 Points

  8 hour slow ox and ready to go. Tasted blind vs other Napa big guns. Very well made, tannins still present but not overwhelming and a nice long finish. That said, was bested by a ‘13 Bevan Sugarloaf. Drink after giving plenty of air or hold.

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  8/4/2020 - Quiet Lion Likes this wine: 98 Points

  Decanted over cocktails. As usual with Scarecrow, this showed a magical combination of intensity and lightness on the palate with pure dark berry liqueur, dancing acid, firm tannins, and an evolution in the mouth with each sip. With air the tannins got a bit more grippy and it didn't last long enough to see what emerged on the other side. The outdoor setting on a warm Seattle summer evening may not have been ideal for such a fine wine but hey, you never know which bottle is going to be your last.

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