Community Tasting Note

argonne1@gmail.com Likes this wine:

Sunday, April 7, 2013 - My wife and I discovered this wine at a co-op tasting room in Kenwood in the Sonoma Valley in summer of 2011. It was priced at $45.00 per bottle and we were in ecstasy when we tasted.

That price was beyond our budget and we discussed buying a single bottle. About that time, the sales clerk informed us that the wine was being closed out and that if we bought one case we would receive one case free.

I promptly pulled out my credit card and we had two (2) cases shipped to us in Arizona during the winter (one doesn't ship wine to Arizona in summer).

Drinking this cab is like consuming pure essence. It's not for everyone. The concentration of varietal character is far beyond your normal cab. It consists of 98% cabernet and 2% merlot. The cab fruit is from the Stagecoach Vineyard on Atlas Peak in the Napa Valley. The yield from this vineyard is low and the grapes that remain on the vine are themselves very concentrated.

My wife and I have not been able to find a cab like this in the stores. At least not within the range of our pocketbooks.

We haven't tasted anything like this since BV cabernet George de La Tour reserve 1968 or a couple of other memorable cabs from the early 1980s.

Kerry Damsky is listed as one of the winemakers on this vintage and I've learned he's still very active in the Napa-Sonoma areas. However, it appears that the winery hasn't turned out any new vintages in some time and I'm not sure if they are still operating.

We still have more than a dozen bottles remaining in our makeshift cellar and we only drink them with friends on special occasions. What a wonderful cab!

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