Winemaker Notes
The 2018 Grand Ciel Cabernet is in a class of its own, with aromas of dark chocolate, Bing cherry, fresh ground coffee and black currants all exploding from the glass. Seductive and dense, this wine has seamless balance and polished tannins that allow it to be approachable in its youth. The background of toasty oak harmonizes beautifully with the rich dark fruits, leading to a finish that will only get better if you have the patience to cellar.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Grand Ciel Vineyard checks in as 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from a great vineyard on Red Mountain. It spent 20 months in new French oak. Brilliant notes of pure cassis and darker currants fruits as well as tobacco leaf, chocolate, dried herbs, and some loamy earth all emerge from the glass, and it's full-bodied, has a pure, elegant, balanced mouthfeel, silky tannins, and is just a quintessential, impeccably made Cabernet from this team that can be drunk today or cellared for 25-30 years. Bravo. Best After 2022
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Generously layered and slightly volatile at first, the 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Grand Ciel blossoms in the glass with rigorous spinning, revealing its dark-fruited core with dusty essence and intoxicatingly floral array. Full-bodied, generous and powerful, the mouthfeel is lush and marked with a fine mineral tension before displaying a firm tannic edge. The wine continues to reveal layers of juiciness and spiciness before somersaulting into a blockbuster finish. I have no doubt that this wine will continue to please thirsty palates for more than two decades. Bravo!
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2018 DeLille Cellars Grand Ciel is a World Class wine from one of the world's finest Cabernet Sauvignon grape-growing regions. TASTING NOTES: This superbly balanced wine excels with aromas and flavors of savory spices, ripe fruit, licorice, and earth. Give it a few years in the cellars and serve it with a well-seasoned, oven-roasted prime rib roast. (Tasted: February 16, 2022, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine & Spirits
From its prime vineyard on Red Mountain, this is DeLille’s statement wine. Despite its size and amplitude, despite the dark fruit and chocolatey oak frame, it’s balanced, the texture bearing a mid-weight lift with plenty of acidity and sumptuous tannins.
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James Suckling
A lovely nose of blackberry, blackcurrant, dried thyme and suede. Full-bodied with fine, slightly chewy tannins. Vivid on the palate with plush, ripe fruit. There is lift and clarity, with wet-mineral character. Dark chocolate at the finish.
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Wine Enthusiast
This is a single-vineyard, single-varietal wine. Aged 20 months in 100% new French oak, the aromas bring notes of cocoa, vanilla, chocolate, black currant, mineral and dark fruit. There's richness and intensity to the dark-fruit flavors, with plenty of structure behind them while still keeping it all in balance. It's polished and classy. Best from 2028.
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Wine Spectator
Built for the cellar, with deep currant, stony mineral and black olive flavors that wrap around muscular tannins, which need time to resolve. Best after 2023.
A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
A coveted source of top quality red grapes among premier Washington producers, the Red Mountain AVA is actually the smallest appellation in the state. As its name might suggest, it is actually neither a mountain nor is it composed of red earth. Instead the appellation is an anticline of the Yakima fold belt, a series of geologic folds that define a number of viticultural regions in the surrounding area. It is on the eastern edge of Yakima Valley with slopes facing southwest towards the Yakima River, ideal for the ripening of grapes. The area’s springtime proliferation of cheatgrass, which has a reddish color, actually gives the area the name, "Red" Mountain.
Red Mountain produces some of the most mineral-driven, tannic and age-worthy red wines of Washington and there are a few reasons for this. It is just about the hottest appellation with normal growing season temperatures commonly reaching above 90F. The soil is particularly poor in nutrients and has a high pH, which results in significantly smaller berry sizes compared to varietal norms. The low juice to skin ratio in smaller berries combined with the strong, dry summer winds, leads to higher tannin levels in Red Mountain grapes.
The most common red grape varieties here are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc and Syrah, among others. Limited white varieties are grown, namely Sauvignon blanc.
The reds of the area tend to express dark black and blue fruit, deep concentration, complex textures, high levels of tannins and as previously noted, have good aging capabilities.