Community Tasting Note

IvanLi Likes this wine:

Wednesday, January 2, 2019 - The purple-ruby 2013 DC Red Rock Terrace is an incredibly ripe yet elegant wine from Napa Valley.
I was lucky to taste this bottle right after a number of high-end Bordeauxs (namely 2003 Pontet Canet, 2005 Palmer, 2000 Pape Clement, 2009 Les Forts de Latour) and I have to say that it holds it's own against this stiff competition. More importantly, it manages to combine the lush and opulent Napa Valley fruit with subtle elegance and aristocracy of it's french counterparts.
The nose is a dense and fresh concoction of creme de cassis, graphite, bitter chocolate and hints of forest floor and flowers. Then comes the wave of smoky, slightly overpowering and bitter oak.
On the palate, the wine is very ripe and at the same time fresh, with layers of blackberry, black cherry, cassis, graphite and, finally, oak again.
The tannins are mouth-coating and substantial but extremely suave.
While you can certainly drink this wine now with or w/o the food, I would suggest to wait another 5 years before the oak fully integrates itself. Based on my previous experience with other DC wines, they truly start to shine at the age of 12, but taking into account the seriousness of the 2013 vintage you can certainly add another 2-3 years. At this time it can hit the 97-99 point zone easily.
Thus, the suggested drinking dates of 2024-2040 don't look way off to me.

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