2018 VHR Cabernet Sauvignon Extended Barrel Age Vine Hill Ranch

Community Tasting Notes (10) Avg Score: 96.6 points

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  2/24/2024 - Cablover1982 Likes this wine: 98 Points

  This is the ‘18 VHR Extended Barrel Age. I believe it’s aged extra year in barrel. It’s deeper, richer, more concentrated and heavier than the regular ‘18. And that’s okay because I love the extra weight. My palate loves the bigger wines (Bevan, Herold, Jean H etc) and this is Just about perfect for me. It still has great energy, freshness and brightness. Lots of dark fruits, spices, florals, dust, rock, tomato leaf and orange peel. Great texture and finish.

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  2/16/2023 - bugdoced Likes this wine: 95 Points

  opened at 1:30
  by 7:30 began to open with some fruit and vhr backbone and mid palate attack that is a complete wine if you like modern california cabernet
  delicious and early in its drinking life
  liked this better than the Greer and Macdonald served at pixca

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  11/11/2022 - MJP Hou TX Likes this wine: 97 Points

  The extended time in barrel makes for a different expression from one of my favorite vineyards. A bit more weight on the palate. A little less drive and cut compared to the bottle with less oak exposure. A fair amount of oak tannins and flavors subsided with time in the glass. Today I prefer the standard bottling over the Extended but wouldn’t shy away from the future EX 19 release. This will be a fun one to follow if you happen to have these wines in the cellar.

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  7/24/2022 - ColluraJ Likes this wine: 92 Points

  Medium red. Moderate aromas of greenery and rose petals. Dry, medium body, crisp acidity, medium tannins, and fair balance. Flavors of rhubarb, cherry, and asphalt.

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  6/27/2022 - csimm wrote: 96 Points

  Saturday get-together: A quartet of VHR wines side-by-side (among 20 other wines that night):
  2018 VHR
  2018 VHR Extended Barrel Age
  2019 VHR
  2019 Arrow & Branch VHR
  
  TN: Black cherry, dark cassis, blackberry, vanillin chocolate, spicy caramel cedar (almost like a wider-grain Hungarian oak influence in a heavier flavored Petite Sirah), and cardamom notes all rush to the palate in come-hither form, with a ripe and semi-sweet profile that instantly triggers the Yum factor and sends all of the senses into instant flavor orbit. Finishes with a cedary clip that is both vanillin sweet and slightly bitter, which brings the massive fruit into proper focus but also clips the tail ever so slightly. This wine has a “second finish” on it as well, where the fruit comes back into play and saturates the palate, which does well for the overall mouthfeel of the wine. This was probably the most gluttonous-showing of the Cabs we had that night. A very Bevan-esque showing, but with extra refinement kicked up to the ceiling.
  
  Some in the room found this to be a more enhanced version of the 2018, while others were slightly divided on the differences, benefits, or even any difference between the two 2018s, and then also amongst the greater four VHRs on the table. I was somewhere in the middle of the pack I think, where I certainly found this to be a compelling wine but also wondered if the extended barrel aging had done much to improve the wine in any way, mainly because I thought the 2018 VHR on its own was a fabulous wine. The extended barrel aging certainly made for some slight differences between the two 2018s that were noticeable and noteworthy, but I found my style preference leaning toward the “standard” 2018 VHR due my perceived impressions of freshness, tension, focus, and purity of fruit that seemed slightly more masked by the wood in the extended barrel aged version. Preference aside, the wood (as fine and tasty as it is) was certainly more at the forefront than the 2018 with the standard barrel program.
  
  GENERAL: In the end for me, in this small sample and even smaller window of time, the 2019 VHRs rule the roost as far as I am concerned… and no, this is not one of those, “the newest vintage is the best vintage,” type of thing. Though I have generally found 2019 in Napa to be a notch up from the 2018 vintages, the difference in intensity and concentration between the two 2018 VHRs and the two 2019 VHRs in this particular sampling window was palpable, with the 2019s ticking the one-up meter on essentially every aspect of wine exhibition: complexity, depth, energy, focus, acidity, and tannin refinement. I mean, all four VHRs were all worthy of devoted tender and heaps of demonstrative gushing, with only wine-geek splitting hairs and miniscule squabbling to be had as to the preferential doting on one wine over another.
  
  A super generous contribution from bsumoba to add to the VHR lineup!

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