Winemaker Notes
Pairing: This wine makes an elegant accompaniment to filet mignon with forest mushrooms.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Lots of asphalt, walnut, licorice and blackberry character. Full body, chewy and tannic with loads of structure and tension. Muscular and poised. Needs four or five years more of aging. Solid.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The deep ruby/purple-colored 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Private Reserve Georges de Latour is BV’s flagship wine. It boasts sweet notes of charcoal, burning embers, vanillin, tar and copious quantities of blackcurrant fruit. In keeping with this generously endowed vintage, the wine is supple, full-bodied, multidimensional and opulent. It will drink beautifully young and last for 20-25 years.
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Wine Enthusiast
One of the appellation's more famous wines, this opens in black licorice and blackberry, alongside a streak of malted chocolate, soft and sinewy, with a tension of acidity that adds age-worthy structure. Dense and interesting now, it'll get better over time, cellaring well through 2027.
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
One the very best Georges De Latours in a lifetime of pleasures—I have experienced nearly every vintage since the winery's maiden vintage from 1936. The 2012 Beaulieu Vineyard Georges De Latour Private Reserve Cabernet offers outstanding richness and shows a completeness that is sometimes missing in ultra-premium wines. From blackcurrants to sweet earth and a slight accent of oak, this elegant wine deserves savoring. Drinking nicely now, but needing time to reach its crescendo. (Tasted: May 9, 2016, San Francisco, CA)
One of the most prestigious wines of the world capable of great power and grace, Napa Valley Cabernet is a leading force in the world of fine, famous, collectible red wine. Today the Napa Valley and Cabernet Sauvignon are so intrinsically linked that it is difficult to discuss one without the other. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that this marriage came to light; sudden international recognition rained upon Napa with the victory of the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon in the 1976 Judgement of Paris.
Cabernet Sauvignon undoubtedly dominates Napa Valley today, covering half of the land under vine, commanding the highest prices per ton and earning the most critical acclaim. Cabernet Sauvignon’s structure, acidity, capacity to thrive in multiple environs and ability to express nuances of vintage make it perfect for Napa Valley where incredible soil and geographical diversity are found and the climate is perfect for grape growing. Within the Napa Valley lie many smaller sub-AVAs that express specific characteristics based on situation, slope and soil—as a perfect example, Rutherford’s famous dust or Stags Leap District's tart cherry flavors.