Community Tasting Note
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ikkaariainen Likes this wine: 96 points
October 17, 2016 - A beautiful, elegant, complex and still quite youthful Napa valley bdx blend from one of the best. Capped off an epic night of older CA cabs at our wine group tasting and stood up very well to the likes of equally old both Napa & Alexander valley Silver Oak, Caymus SS, Opus One, Quintessa and Mondavi Reserve, was probably the most youthful wine of the tasting and my WOTN. At this point of maturation this is actually quite a good QPR at our original acquisition cost. Still surprisingly youthful and with proper cellaring has at least another 10+ years to go and I actually do anticipate some further improvement - will space out the 2 remaining bottles in 2-3 year intervals. This wine once again proves the old adage that all really good and well made cabernets / bdx blends, regardless of the point of origin, eventually evolve into French bourdeauxesque type wines although Christian Moueix makes this in a rather bdx style with cab, cab franc and petit verdot to begin with. Briefly splash decanted just to get the must off the nose since everyone was ready to drink it but this could stand a short 30-60 minute decant if time allows. Dark purple with some peripheral bricking, softening, tannins and acid still quite present but very well integrated at this point, good mouth feel, very well balanced, complex and with a really long lingering aftertaste. Nose initially muted but with some air opened up and was dark and floral with dark fruit, blackberry, cassis and tobacco. Flavor profile dark, well integrated and surprisingly intense with balanced oak, cassis, dark fruit, tobacco, earth and a very pleasant mushroom note on the end. Highly recommend this wine. With a few more years allowing for further develpoment of secondary flavors this is easily a 97-98 point wine.
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