

Professional Wine Reviews

Wine Enthusiast

Score: 92

Made in a very ripe, almost in-your-face style, with flamboyant blackberry pie and cassis flavors veering into rum-soaked raisins and prunes. Defines size and power rather than elegance; a brawny, slightly hot wine that nonetheless is compellingly good to drink.



Wine Advocate

Score: 93

This opaque purple-colored 2003 offers sweet aromas of scorched earth, tobacco leaf, blackberries and currants. Layered, beautifully-textured, broad, elegant and refreshing, this well-structured, superb effort should be consumed between 2008-2020.
This wine has concentrated, fruit-forward aromatics with a deep, rich mid-palate and a well-integrated finish. After 16 to 25 days on the skins, the wine went into barrel for twenty months. It was fined in-barrel with fresh egg whites and bottled unfiltered in June 2005. The Cabernet Sauvignon for this wine came from the highly regarded Bordeaux clone #337 and two intensely-flavored, historic California clones, #4 and #15. The Cabernet Franc is clone #1, the Merlot is clone #181, the Petit Verdot is clone #400, and the Malbec is from clones #9 and #595. All of these low-yielding clones were planted because they consistently give high quality and are very effective at expressing our Oakville terroir.




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