Wine & Spirits - December 2020 - 63

YEAR'S BEST US CABERNETS & BLENDS
90 | Beaulieu

needing a year or two of age for the flavors
to fully open. - J.G. §

OAKVILLE
521761

92 | Cornerstone

$120

2016 Oakville Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ^ This wine hits the mouth with vibrant
flavors of red and black currants, then begins
to evolve with scents of violets, black cherries
and green figs. It's zesty and long, with the
kind of game scents in the tannins that point
it directly toward roast duck. - J.G. §

RUTHERFORD
521695

95 | Beaulieu

521740

91 | Clos de Napa

$55

2018 Oakville Napa Valley Cabernet
Sauvignon (Best Buy) ^ Saturated with
flavors of black plums and green figs, this is
a generous cabernet with enough fatness to
balance its herbal tannins. Tightly structured,
bold and easy to drink, this is ready to pour
with grilled lamb. - J.G. §
521765

521742

92 | Nickel & Nickel

$125

2018 Oakville Napa Valley John C. Sullenger Cabernet Sauvignon ^ This comes
from the estate vineyard surrounding the
Nickel & Nickel winery, on the east side of
Highway 29. It has the density and richness of classic Oakville cabernet, with lush
black-cherry flavors, lightly amaro-like bitterness and dark-chocolate tannins lending
an umami bridge to beef stroganoff. - J.G. §
521764

92 | Ultimatum

91 | Clos de Napa

91 | Hoopes

$100

91 | Turnbull

$85

2015 Oakville Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ^ Someone must make a violet-infused
bar of dark chocolate. If not, there's always
this wine, with its delicious blue-black fruit
and bright scents of flowers in a chocolate
bomb. The dense fruit is generously oaked,
warm and giving. - J.G. §
521752
2017 Oakville Napa Valley Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon ^ This heady cabernet is massive and smooth. Whitney Asher of Brava in
Lenox, Mass., described it as "nimble-as in,
an-elephant-dancing-on-a-ball nimble." It's a
big wine, built for a steakhouse. - J.G. §

$500

2016 Oakville Napa Valley Double Rock
Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ^ This is the
first vintage of Ultimatum, a wine from Nick
Goldschmidt, grown at a small parcel rising
up a mid-valley knoll across Oakville Cross
Road from Groth and PlumpJack. It's a plush
Napa Valley extravagance, a vibrant wine in
cherry-red highlights, blueberry-black fruit
and chocolate-umami depths. Bold, juicy and
clean, it will provide ample fresh-cherry flavors for a tea-smoked duck. - J.G. §
518754
$55

2017 Oakville Napa Valley Cabernet
Sauvignon ^ The Clos de Napa wines are
made at Trevor Sheehan's Precision Wine
Company, including this fragrant cabernet,
with Oakville distinction in its tannins.
Its full-on richness combines kirsch and
tobacco-smoke scents with deeper flavors of
blackberry and black mushroom for a wine
with complexity and refinement. For a thickcut ribeye. -J.G. (W&S 2/20; 2,350 cases) §

$85

2017 Oakville Napa Valley Maestro Collection Cabernet Sauvignon ^ A sumptuous
Oakville cabernet, this is ripe and soft in the
middle, then ends on the bitter char of its
dark tannins. For prime rib slow roasted in a
wood oven. - J.G. §

521759

90 | Robert Mondavi

$175

2017 Oakville Napa Valley The Reserve
To Kalon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon ^
There are gentle, gracious aspects to this
young cabernet, along with cool vibrancy to
the dark plum flavors. The tannins are tough
and smoky, driving the wine toward bass
notes of umami and oak. There's freshness
here, the wine needing time to meld. - J.G. §
521751

$145

2017 Rutherford Napa Valley Georges de
Latour Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon ^ Georges de Latour purchased the first
four acres of BV1 in 1900, adding another 130
a few years later, with 80 acres of prime vineyard land on the western Rutherford bench.
He purchased the 147 acres at BV2 in 1910,
at the southern border of Rutherford, neighboring the To Kalon Vineyard in Oakville. In
great vintages of the 1940s and '50s, André
Tchelistcheff grew Georges de Latour Private Reserve wines that lived for six decades
or more. Beaulieu has been through a lot of
changes since those early days and this is the
first vintage, on release, to show the beautiful elegance those old wines must have had
in their time. In 2017, this wine retained its
freshness for six days after the bottle was first
opened, when there was finally nothing left
to taste. But that last taste was still bright and
fresh, sustained by dusty Rutherford tannins
and an aristocratic structure, infused by delicate red and black currant flavors. Trevor
Durling made the wine, his first vintage at
Beaulieu, having joined as general manager
and head winemaker in time to see the 2017
through the growing season to harvest. The
core of the wine comes from BV1 and BV2,
with a contribution from Hewitt, just north
of BV1, a property where Durling has been
growing cabernet since 2010, now producing it at Beaulieu. Treasury Wine Estates
had already begun investing in vineyard
infrastructure at these estate vineyards, having purchased Beaulieu at the end of 2015.
Durling credits more care in managing the
leaf coverage shading certain parcels or rows
of grapes, and more targeted irrigation in
2017, for helping to achieve phenolic ripeness
ahead of sugar in the grapes, allowing him to
harvest earlier than in the past, with a clearer
delineation of the terroir expression in the
grapes. By the time the fires hit on October
8, he already had harvested 80 percent of the
fruit for this wine, when typically, in the past,
the team would have brought in 40 to 50 percent. This may well turn out to be a historic
vintage for Beaulieu; it's a wine well worth
buying for your cellar. - J.G. §

WINE & SPIRITS

DECEMBER 2020

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Wine & Spirits - December 2020

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