Winemaker Notes
Blend: 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Merlot, 0.5% Cabernet Franc, 0.5% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
-
Wine & Spirits
This is a Napa Valley cabernet that does everything right. Renee Ary blends fruit from Duckhorn’s estate with grapes from growers, including 12 percent merlot to point up the luscious texture, aging it for 16 months in French oak barrels (half of them new), without the wine becoming overtly oaky. It’s a wine of elegance and restraint, delicious in its sweet purple-plum intensity, succulent in its earthy tannins. Those mineral tannins retreat into the finish, allowing the savory fruit to move in. Accessible now, this will only improve with a few years in bottle.
-
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The 2017 Duckhorn Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon deftly defines what a Napa Valley red is all about, and this is a great thing. TASTING NOTES: This wine displays aromas and flavors of warm berries, savory spices, and oak front and center. Enjoy it with prime rib, and ask for a rare cut. (Tasted: July 19, 2020, San Francisco, CA)
-
Wine Enthusiast
This is a soft, rounded and appealing red, juicy in blackberry and dark cherry. Ripe tannins add to the richness and lush palate, finishing on accents of clove and toasted oak.
-
Wine Spectator
Ripe, rounded and generally open in feel, with friendly plum, raspberry and cherry notes woven together with light floral and red licorice notes. Polished finish. Drink now through 2027.
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.