2016 Bevan Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon Wildfoote Vineyard, Vixen Block

Community Tasting Notes (29) Avg Score: 96.5 points

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View AGELVIS's profile
  • Report Issue

  12/15/2023 - AGELVIS Likes this wine: 95 Points

  Ninety minute decant. Deep dark magenta color. Stewed blackberry, blueberry, sautéed mushroom, milk chocolate, basil, licorice, and subtle tar. Dry palate, with sandy acidity. Firm, medium intensity tannins on the longish finish.
  
  This is slightly aged hedonism. My wife didn’t like the contrast of richness with herbal notes. This is totally my style.

  1 person found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comments (4)

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View bubbachumps's profile
  • Report Issue

  11/4/2023 - bubbachumps wrote: 96 Points

  Fantastic wine, 1st time having this BEvan bottling and it totally delivered. Cassis, graphite, some darker fruits and a wonderful earthiness on the nose. Beautiful on the palate, tannins, acid and fruit all in proportion.

  3 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comments (1)

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View YankeeRobio's profile
  • Report Issue

  6/22/2023 - YankeeRobio Likes this wine: 99 Points

  Double blueberry, concentrated cassis, intense licorice, sweet tar, chocolate. Sexy and decadent wine.

  3 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View sfwinelover1's profile
  • Report Issue

  3/11/2023 - sfwinelover1 Likes this wine: 96 Points

  First of 2 from an auction about 3 years ago, brought over to A_M’s abode and consumed with a ‘97 Arthur Elevation and a ‘15 Myriad 3 Twins. On the nose and palate on opening, an explosion, almost like a genie waiting to get out of a bottle, of oh so sweet black cherries, cassis and mixed dark berry compote, classic Bevan forest spice, dark chocolate, violets, espresso and tar, and, yeah, booze. Purple black, body and legs like Anna Nicole Smith in her heyday. Beaucoup tannins and just a bit less acidity, intense heat which blows off, mostly, after a couple of hours. And yeah, it’s kinda complex, persistent and intense (and maybe I should combine the last 2 and say insistent). I tend to like Bevan more than Smith but less than TRB, but since A_M is infatuated and had asked about this wine previously—he left me to my own devices on selection today—this was an obvious candidate, especially since it seemed like a neat compare-contrast with the Arthur. And boy, was it ever. I’ve described other young cult cabs off the pour as being not unlike drinking water from a fire hose; this was more like imbibing kerosene from a water cannon with the booziness drowning out most of the other elements, on the palate in particular. Like the ‘16 B LPV, though, this loved the air, at least for my palate, and with a couple of hours+ of it, it began, and I emphasize began, to balance (don’t even get me started on integration) and the other elements, all more desirable to me, really stepped up. Don’t get me wrong; this was never anything but huge and extracted. This wine and the Arthur come about as close to the poles of Napa BDX winemaking without invoking the dreaded Stony Hill or Mayacamas as is possible, but within its style, it was delicious and fun, albeit in a way I’d describe as almost trashy, as if you don’t quite want to look yourself in the mirror for enjoying it so much, like, and sfwl is imagining here, as if you’d had the most enjoyable night of your life with an escort, only to wake up in the morning realizing that her tariff was needed for your next mortgage payment (take that, csimm!). For my palate, this probably topped out around the 3.5-4 hour mark (it was aerated for 2 hours before I arrived, then we drank it over another 3.5-4 hours there) and lost just a bit of steam in the last small pour. That said, this wine fits into my counter-narrative of the better cult cabs, that rather than drinking them early and often, they’re best enjoyed as a rare treat, and if you’re not going to shoot a compressor into them (or better yet, put them into a Veg-o-Matic), with some bottle age. This wine won’t have anything close to the tenure of the Arthur, but I think it could improve over the next few years, then likely stay quite good for another 5-8 past that. Even with decent structure, the bigness of this wine for me made it unlikely to succeed as a complement to the steak, and the small taste I had for experimental purposes didn’t prove me wrong. I don’t have a ton of history with Bevan, but I’d say that generally, if you haven’t had his wines, you’ll be able to tell from the TNs if the $200 or so this and its brethren go for are a good use of your wampum, or if it would be better put it toward 10 or 15 minutes of said escort’s time. Or perhaps best yet, you’ll combine the 2, but you didn’t read that here. 95-96++, with some potential for upside in the future, or even now if this sort of thing is more regularly yours than it is mine.

  2 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View RayT's profile
  • Report Issue

  1/23/2023 - RayT Likes this wine: 97 Points

  While Bevan makes a ton of different wines from many vineyards, this and the EE are my favorites. While I find the EE a little more consistent this is the one Bevan wine that I find that has the structure to go with his signature plush fruit. A lot of heat on the nose with cassis, blueberries, and black cherry. On the pnp I do not taste the alcohol and typical of Bevan wines this is exceptionally smooth. This wine was really singing after a 2 hour decant. The flavor profile is in line with the nose adding spice on the finish. While Bevan wines are typically made in a hedonistic style this wine has the structure and body to carry the expressive fruit. The best Wildfoote I have drank and sadly my only bottle of this vintage.

  2 people found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comment

View all 29 Community Tasting Notes

Professional reviews have copyrights and you can view them here for your personal use only as private content. To view pro reviews you must either subscribe to a pre-integrated publication or manually enter reviews below. Learn more.