Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2005 Proprietary Red is mainly sourced from the To Kalon vineyard and is composed of 58% Cabernet Sauvignon, 23% Cabernet Franc and 19% Petit Verdot. Deep garnet-brick in color, it features a wonderfully spicy nose of fenugreek, cumin seed and cloves over a core of blackberry and plum preserves, tobacco and dusty soil with a hint of dried rosemary on roasted lamb. The palate is full-bodied, rich and seductive with plush tannins and wonderfully exotic spices on the long finish.
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Wine Spectator
Complex and savory, graceful and elegant, this unfolds to reveal spicy herb, dried currant, mineral, anise, mint, sage and tarry notes, then firms up nicely on the finish, providing structure and traction. Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.
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Wine Enthusiast
Tim Mondavi is back with this interesting Cabernet blend. It’s very much in the modern Napa style, soft, rich and sophisticated, with cherry, red currant, Asian spice and new oak flavors. It’s an elegant wine, but a fairly tannic one, with a dusty astringency that suggests mid-term aging. An auspicious, if expensive, new beginning.
Undoubtedly proving its merit over and over, Napa Valley is a now a leading force in the world of prestigious red wine regions. Though Cabernet Sauvignon dominates Napa Valley, other red varieties certainly thrive here. Important but often overlooked include Merlot and other Bordeaux varieties well-regarded on their own as well as for their blending capacities. Very old vine Zinfandel represents an important historical stronghold for the region and Pinot noir is produced in the cooler southern parts, close to the San Pablo Bay.
Perfectly situated running north to south, the valley acts as a corridor, pulling cool, moist air up from the San Pablo Bay in the evenings during the hot days of the growing season, which leads to even and slow grape ripening. Furthermore the valley claims over 100 soil variations including layers of volcanic, gravel, sand and silt—a combination excellent for world-class red wine production.