2003 Scarecrow Cabernet Sauvignon

Community Tasting Notes (28) Avg Score: 94.6 points

• Options

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

  5/19/2022 - Cailles wrote: 91 Points

  Scarecrow - Complete Vertical 2003-2019 + 2x PNV: Non blind. Not decanted. It is obvious, why Scarecrow has the status it has. This is truly one of the very best Napa wines. A few observations: 1) The absolute highlight in almost all vintages is Scarecrow’s ability to combine aromatic density and intensity with absolute weightlessness. Very, very few Napa Valley wines achieve that kind of weightlessness - other than Harlan, probably no other wine that consistently over the vintages. More recent vintages are of course a touch less weightless (due to their youth) but are as light and airy as any wine in the respective vintage. 2) The wines have a lot of substance with a flavor profile with lots of red berries and floral notes complementing the dark Cabernet fruits, always lots of earthy minerality and some herbs and sensuous, luxurious oaky notes reminding me of Cheval Blanc. 3) While probably Bordeaux-esque for Napa standards in its appearance, it is still distinctively a Napa wine. In the early years, I even found a touch too much ripeness and some alcohol heat in the wines which doesn’t seem to be an issue in the vintages of this decade. 4) These wines all are great to drink, only the structured vintages of 2010, 2013 as well as the 2016 were not really open for business and would have needed decanting. All others showed great right out of the bottle.
  
  TN: Very intense, very ripe nose with some alcohol heat. Dark fruit, mostly ripe cassis, herbs, crushed rocks and with time more earthy notes which helps to balance the ripe fruit. Super well-defined. Just a bit too ripe and a tad too much heat. On the palate lots of ripe, even port-like fruit but mixed with fresher cassis and even some blue notes. Beautiful minerality, some nice herbs, some toasty notes. Quite complex and again, very well defined. Perfect silky tannins, very good freshness, superb creaminess and balance. Just too ripe and some heat I dont like to be overall a winner but still a good wine. 91/92 pts
  
  Decanting: Not decanted. Not much change in the glass. No extensive decanting needed.

  1 person found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

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

  5/12/2022 - G_H wrote: 93 Points

  A complete Scarecrow vertical: A great debut vintage, violet berries, dark fruit, some licorice, a bit dusty, a hint of cassis. Some heat, but still on a reasonable level. At first I was a bit worried, that it would fall apart with too much air, as it had a whiff of overly mature notes, but with some air this blew off and it was just delicious. So I'd say that there is still quite a bit of life left here.

  Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No / Comments (1)

• Options

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

  12/30/2019 - eschuldt wrote: 95 Points

  Delicious and fruit forward given the age

  Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

  • Post a Comment
  • View michael47's profile
  • Report Issue

  4/23/2019 - michael47 Likes this wine: 88 Points

  Nothing like the last bottle tasted which was spectacular. Hot, overly alcoholic and frankly disappointing.

  Do you find this review helpful? Yes - No / Comment

• Options

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

  9/26/2018 - Burgnick Likes this wine: 93 Points

  Decanted for 90 mins before serving. Very rich and ripe but also light on its feet. The palate showcased cassis, black currant, vanilla and pepper which resembled the nose very much. There was this regalness and elegance that were squeezing out subtlely from the palate. The tannins were soft and silky. I enjoyed this very much tonight but I would prefer it even more if the fruit was less ripe. Good effort for his first vintage. Like many cult napa wine, my concern is he ageability. The wine is drinking beautifully already. But can it age and improve? 93-94

  1 person found this helpful, do you? Yes - No / Comment

View all 28 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.