Top Ten: California It’s nice to see this wine coming back into form and the 2013 is right on track. The Napa label may be commercial in size at 24,000+ cases, but it's reserve style in taste. Fresh, ripe, spicy black fruits greet the nose and tumble onto the palate flecked with tobacco, cocoa and cinnamon. The blend is 75 percent cabernet sauvignon with varying amounts of merlot, petit verdot, cabernet franc and malbec, all spending 26 months in wood. We love the complete body of work here and suggest this wine could easily be aged through 2023 and beyond. Steak anyone? Fine value.

This smells more like Bordeaux than Tuscany, and tastes like a blend between the two, incorporating cabernet franc's foresty tones with touches of cabernet sauvignon (13%) and sangiovese (5%). The vintage suited cabernet franc well, making something brisk and elegant out of conditions that devastated much of Tuscany's sangiovese.