Sonoma: Another Brilliant Vintage in 2018Lastly, the 2017 Le Desir is 80% Cabernet Franc, with the balance mostly Merlot mixed with a splash of Malbec. It has a wonderful Cabernet Franc floral character as well as awesome black raspberry, cedarwood, forest floor, violets, rose petals, new leather, and who knows what else. Incredibly complex, it takes lots of air to show at its best and is medium to full-bodied, has a bright spine of acidity, fabulous tannins, and a great, great finish. The elegance of this wine paired with its richness and depth is something to behold. It’s another damn near perfect wine from this estate, and to see this quality from a challenging vintage like 2017 boggles the mind. Hats off to the father-daughter team of Pierre and Hélène Seillan.

The 2017s From Sonoma Another gem that’s going to flirt with perfection in a decade is the 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon Rockfall Vineyard. Based on 100% Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon aged 20 months in 65% new French oak, its deep purple color is followed by a mammoth-sized bouquet of crème de cassis, lead pencil shavings, scorched earth, and graphite. Showing more spice and tobacco with time in the glass, it has incredible purity of fruit, building tannins, and flawless balance, all making for a majestic Sonoma Cabernet Sauvignon that will keep for 30 years or more.

Very deep garnet-purple colored, the 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain gives up wonderfully expressive crème de cassis, licorice, tar and underbrush notes with hints of charcuterie and bay leaves. Big, rich, full and opulent in the mouth, it has firm, velvety tannins and seamless freshness, finishing very long with spice nuances coming through.

The famous Bosché Vineyard is a spot in Rutherford composed of gravelly, loamy soil and situated just at the base of the Mayacamas Mountains. A blend of 93.8% Cabernet Sauvignon and 6.2% Merlot, the 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon Bosché Vineyard was aged 28 months in French oak. This vineyard has turned out many a classic wine capable of lasting 30-40 years, and this 2013 is one of the all-time great Bosché Cabernet Sauvignons. It offers an inky ruby/purple color, a gorgeous nose of graphite, black cherry, wood spice and barbecue notes, enormous body and richness, and a heady, full-bodied, long finish of 50+ seconds with moderately high tannins. This is a great classic from Napa, but not one for drinking over the near-term. Give it 7-8 years of bottle age and drink it over the following 50 years.

The 2021 Le Desir is based on Cabernet Franc with the addition of 10% Merlot and 3% Malbec. It’s savory and expressive on the nose with aromas of wild, coiled blackberries, cassis, juniper, minty and peppery spice, and dark earth. Full-bodied, with velvety tannins, even, focused acidity, and a long finish, it’s drinking very well now and is a bit more immediate compared to the La Joie. It has notes of black tea through the palate, with a long earth note and its more noble structure making itself known as it lasts long on the palate. It’s going to drink well over the coming 20 or more years. It’s another exceptional wine in the range. This wine has a more rugged, mountainous feel texturally, but it’s done at the highest level. 2500 cases were produced.

A similar saturated dark red color, the 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Christopher's comes from a northern exposition at 2400 feet elevation on decomposed volcanic soils. it’s layered and deep, with hallmark aromatics of cigar box, tobacco, blackcurrants, wild minty herbs, and leather. The palate has a lovely purity and ripeness to the fruit, with a velvety texture, and its darker mineral and mouthwatering accents emerge after the wine is gone. It’s a lovely wine with considerable complexity that can be enjoyed over the next 15 years.

The 2022 W S Keyes Merlot is a blend of 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon. Deep garnet-purple in color, it needs a little swirling to coax out notes of blackberry pie and plum preserves, giving way to nuances of dusty soil, tobacco, and cinnamon stick. The medium to full-bodied palate is tightly wound with black fruit and minerally flavors, supported by firm, grainy tannins and great tension, finishing on a lingering ferrous note.

The 2022 W S Keyes Chardonnay prances out of the glass with graceful scents of honey-drizzled pears, white peaches, and allspice, followed by hints of baking bread and marzipan. The medium- to full-bodied palate shimmers with vibrant orchard fruit layers, supported by a racy backbone and satiny texture, finishing long and chalky. Stunning!

This year, Pete Fraser will launch the High Sands, Ovitelli and Hickinbotham together, giving a better chance to view the connectivity. Well, there is certainly a theme in the '23s. A degree of alcohol less, lower colour and a commanding, yet incredibly fine, structural framework. This is a very different High Sands, a reflection of the cool year, but also an evolving direction, leaning into elegance, soaring fragrance and savoury tension. Red cherry, tart raspberry, intensely floral, swirling with North African spices, musk and orange peel. The palate is coiled at this stage, but the fruit has flex and will bloom with time in bottle, radiating out from the core of mineral-feeling tannin and skein of vigorous acidity. This is truly magnificent now, but the future is one of dazzling possibility.

The 2022 Lokoya Cabernet Sauvignon Diamond Mountain District is a tour de force, offering a
Latour-like nose of pure cassis, lead pencil shavings, graphite, crushed stone, and new leather. Fullbodied, powerful, and incredibly rich on the palate, this doesn't get much better in the vintage. The tannins are beautifully integrated, and the overall balance and purity are simply awesome. This 100% Cabernet Sauvignon spent 22 months in 85% new French oak, and while it's certainly
approachable with a decant, it will benefit from 4-5 years of bottle age and keep for 25+ years.

The 2022 Caladan Red Wine Napa Valley is a gorgeous Bordeaux blend that delivers a seamless,
full-bodied profile that ranks, unquestionably, with the top wines of the vintage. Based on 37%
Merlot, 23% Cabernet Sauvignon, 17% Malbec, 16% Cabernet Franc, and 7% Petit Verdot, aged 22
months in 54% new French oak, it offers a complex bouquet of black cherries, cassis, darker
chocolate, graphite, and spicy oak nuances. Rich and full-bodied on the palate, it has a pure,
layered mouthfeel, ripe, polished tannins, and outstanding length. This awesome wine will benefit
from 2-3 years of bottle age and keep for 15+ years. Hats off to Carpenter for this incredible wine in
a challenging vintage.

Vibrant ruby and purple, youthful and bright in the glass. Blackberry pastille, Chinese five spice, and pastrami aromas. Palate is instantly alive with power and intensity yet a youthful vibrancy. Red and black berry fruits sit in the central pylon, strung from there we see a mélange of powdered spices, curing meats and earthy undertones. Tannins are prodigious in their power but never stray beyond the required tension, allow the full textural joy of this wine to carry to an almost limitless end. A wine of juxtaposition, carrying a lightness of being that belies its power and intensity.

Deep-ish ruby red with a lot of purple in the colour; a reserved but engaging nose of dried herbs and earthy, undergrowth scents, a note of balsamic herbs floating across to suggest some whole-bunch influence, while the palate is gorgeously sweet fruited and succulent, with ample superfine tannins in support but very sotto voce, the finish filling out superbly into a long peacock's tail with the flavour and tannins perfectly matched. An exquisite pinot noir.

Light bright yellow in the glass with creamy pastry, spiced nectarine and lemon aromas and flavours, the palate intense and compact, tightly focused and long, with pencilly/cedary and lemon butter flavours of great energy and vitality, lingering long on the aftertaste. Refreshing acidity. Superb now, even better with a bit more age on it.

This is so luscious, ripe and gorgeous that you don't notice the massive, fine-grained tannins until the finish. A truly rich, fruity, opulent and delicious wine that also has a firm, sneaky texture from the powdery-fine tannins and some red fruit acidity. Black cherries, baked blackberries, creme de cassis, spearmint and cocoa. 100% of the grapes come from the W. S. Keyes Vineyard. Drinkable now, but best from 2035.

A beauty that's muscular but elegant. So pure and focused in blackcurrants, creme de cassis, red cherries and dark chocolate. It comes from two vineyards, Wurtele and Yverdon, that go up to 580 meters in elevation. The wine opens with opulent fruit and a smooth entry, then the tannins engage and grip the palate while the flavors expand through the finish. Drinkable now, but best from 2030.

A spicy, dark chocolaty wine that's well-structured and packed with black fruit and a melange of spices. Blended with 14% petit verdot, which adds tannin and savory black pepper accents. It's concentrated and well layered, with fine-grained tannins that are nicely balanced by acidity. Drink now or hold.

So velvety, sleek, layered and composed, it's a treat to drink now or save for later. Enjoy the complexity of a wine blended from 25 to 30 lots of mountain and valley floor sites up and down the reach of Napa Valley. Red and black fruit notes give some of the delicious fruitiness of Rutherford, while mountain grapes from Atlas Peak and cooler-climate grapes from the Stags Leap district add their own subtleties. Drink or hold.

A world class wine by Chris Carpenter, the 2021 Mt. Brave Cabernet Franc shows off its inky core, revealing violets, tar and menthol tones in the glass, alongside a hedonistic black fruit aromatic backbone. The palate is plush and dense with a refined mouthfeel and glorious depth and complexity. Beautifully-structured, with heady black and blue fruits, enjoy this beautiful wine now and over the next twenty years to comer. Drink 2024-2044- 98

The world-class 2021 La Jota Cabernet Sauvignon can benefit from a long decant. Once aroused this offers black currant cordial and creme de violette flavors that meld well with the stony accents, with touches of graphite and black cherry compote. The beautiful purple and black floral aromatics add to the enjoyment as this beauty could really use another year in the cellar prior to enjoying. Drink 2025-2050- 98

A stunning new bottling, the 2021 La Jota Merlot is sourced from this high elevation site on Howell Mountain. Deeply colored and perfumed, this leads with anise and black rose petal aromatics alongside wintergreen, fennel seed and suggestions of damp rock. The palate is fresh and vicious with great weight and tension. Loads of mouth-watering acidity invade the mid-palate, alongside heady black and blue fruits, with pencil lead and loamy soil accents. A joy to consume now, enjoy this beauty over the next two decades. Drink 2024-2044- 98

One of the greatest Chardonnays ever produced in South Africa, this is a world-class wine that combines components from the Klein Karoo, Overberg, Robertson and Stellenbosch. Fermented in 35% new barrels, it's a chiselled, intense, fynbos and aniseed scented white with layers of kelp, vanilla spice, oyster shell, struck match and waxed lemon. Long, nuanced and very complex. 2025-32   

The Lokoya Diamond Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon is primarily sourced from two sites: the 6.4ha Wallis Vineyard and Rhyolite Ridge (7.2ha), which are primarily volcanic soils. Winemaker Chris Carpenter says that Diamond Mountain is in the warmest part of Napa Valley's mountain terroirs. The tannins are softer, the pH is a little higher, and the acids are a little more savoury. With the 2021 vintage, Carpenter is right about the tannins being a bit softer, and they are very long. The wine is surprisingly medium-to-fullbodied, with very beautiful aromatics of sandalwood and sage, cherry blossoms and blood orange, and those soft tannins are superfine. Grippy acidity is very savoury, scented with a spicy herbaceousness that carries through a long and extended finish. The wine is so fresh and framed by an expressive vein of crushed stone and red volcanic minerality. Chris Carpenter makes the Lokoya wines, and the label is owned by the Jackson Family. There are four 100% Cabernet Sauvignon wines in the portfolio, each from a different mountain: Diamond Mountain, Howell Mountain, Spring Mountain, and Mt. Veeder. The winemaking is the same for all the wines, with mostly native yeast fermentation, pump-overs by hand, malolactic fermentation in barrel and ageing for 22 months in 90% new French oak. What separates these wines is not style but place. Carpenter believes that fine Napa Valley Cabernet wines are not only defined by the soils of their sites but also by the Bay Area Pacific breezes that roll in and out daily, cooling the valley from the south to the north in the evenings and from the north to the south in the mornings. These mountains define cooling as any place in the valley and the diurnal temperature shifts at higher elevations create an equilibrium where climatic fluctuations aren't as pronounced as fruit grown below the fog lines.

In my tasting with winemaker Chris Carpenter, we talked at length about differentiating sub-appellations of Napa in the Lokoya wines. Still, with Cardinale, the Oakville-based crown jewel in the Jackson Family portfolio, the idea is the sum must be greater than the parts. This is not an estate wine. It is culled from multiple appellations, typically between three and nine, depending on the vintage. Sources have been Vine Hill Ranch and To Kalon in the past. The 2021 is 91% Cabernet Sauvignon from Stags Leap, Rutherford, and St. Helena, with 9% Merlot from the 24ha Keyes Estate Vineyard on Howell Mountain, aged 22 months in 80% new French oak. Super savoury aromatics of black cherry, cedar, black liquorice, graphite, black tea, tobacco leaf, rose petal and sagebrush. Full-bodied with all those aromatic qualities making appearances on the full-bodied palate, framed by a soaring tannin profile that resolves with beautifully crisp and mouthwatering acidity, which is so impressive given the density of the wine. The acidity is so pure and cleansing it gives the sensation of fresh, crisp mountain water washing away the deeply robust and powerful tannins that frame this powerhouse wine, readying you for another sip.

The 2021 Le Desir is made from 87% Cabernet Franc, 11% Merlot, and 2% Malbec. Deep garnet-purple colored, it’s quite shy to start off and even more closed than its siblings (La Muse and La Joie), needing a lot of swirling to bring out notes of fresh black and red cherries, juicy blueberries, and black raspberries, leading with touches of iris, tilled loam, aniseed, and garrigue. The medium to full-bodied palate is tight-knit and intense with spine-tingling tension, delivering subtle floral, mineral, and earth-inspired sparks, finishing long with a perfumed firework display.