Winemaker Notes
#100 Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2025
The 2022 vintage of Cabernet from our iconic Bosché Vineyard is a beautiful expression of its pedigree and terroir. The nose expresses ripe notes of black raspberry, blueberry compote, and spiced mulberry. Nuances of vanilla, toasted cedar, and baking spice are contributed by time in French oak, while subtle savory notes of black olive and bay leaf add complexity. The acidity is fresh and supportive, giving energy and balance while the tannins are graceful and lingering, indicating it drinks well in its youth and will also age well in the cellar for decades. Aging potential in a proper cellar is 30 years or more.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
One of Freemark Abbey's flagship single-vineyard bottlings, the 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon Bosché Vineyard is derived from a 22-acre site the winery has been working with since 1968. Currently, the oldest vines date to 1991. Planted to Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, this vintage contains approximately 6% Merlot. Touches of cinnamon, vanilla, dark chocolate and mocha accent super-ripe black cherries. Full-bodied, ripe and close to velvety—yes, the texture is perhaps a touch coarser than in the very best years—it's a terrific effort, with ample concentration and length.
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Decanter
In 2022, the blend for this single-vineyard Cabernet is 94% Cabernet Sauvignon and 6% Merlot, aged for 20 months in 61% new French oak. The vines here are earlier ripening and avoid the aggressive grip often associated with Rutherford tannins. Instead, the tannins are superfine, supporting a medium-bodied richness that makes the wine especially approachable in this vintage. Ripe, sweet fruit leads the way—black cherry and fig layered with blue fruit that fills in the gaps—while the polished structure resolves into a rocky mineral character, complemented by intense cocoa powder and forest berry notes. Rich, layered, and immediately accessible. The Bosché Vineyard has a storied history with Freemark Abbey. In 1972, the winery’s partners secured a long-term agreement with grower John Bosché for his Rutherford Cabernet, which had previously been sold to Beaulieu Vineyard as a component of its flagship Georges de Latour bottling. Since 1970, Freemark Abbey has bottled Cabernet Bosché. The 8.9-hectare vineyard sits on a gravel bench with a high water table and requires careful canopy management to control vigor.
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James Suckling
A standout wine from a time-tested vineyard that's already delicious but will keep improving with age. So rich, creamy, chocolaty and layered, braced by super fine-grained, silty tannins. Full-bodied, saturated in black cherry, cocoa, milk chocolate, blueberry and mocha flavors. Blended with 6% merlot. It offers good acidity at a pH of 3.5. Drinkable now, but best from 2032.
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Wine Enthusiast
A pleasing complex of black fruits integrated with baking spices and tobacco weave through firm, powdery fine tannins for impressive structural integrity and a lot of length. Savory flavors emerge in the finish revealing a deftly made wine.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Checking in as a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, the 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon Bosché offers plums, black fruits, spice, graphite, dark chocolate, and scorched earth wood smoke aromas and flavors. Medium to full-bodied on the palate, it shows concentration and nice balance, with a structured mouthfeel and ripe tannins. While the fruit leans to the very ripe side, this impressive effort will evolve for 8-10 years.
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Wine Spectator
Leads with a burst of open-knit but persistent red and black cherry compote flavors. Modestly juicy energy keeps the fruit going, while subtle notes of cedar, iris and iron peek through the understated finish.
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.
The Rutherford sub-region of Napa Valley centers on the town of Rutherford and covers some of Napa Valley’s finest vineyard real estate, spanning from the Mayacamas in the west, to the Vaca Mountains on the other side of the valley.
Inside of the Rutherford AVA, bordering the Mayacamas, is a stretch of uplands called the Rutherford Bench. (These bench lands technically run the length of Oakville as well). Mountain runoff creates deep, well-drained, alluvial soils on the bench, giving vine roots plenty of reason to permeate deep into the ground. The result is wine with great structure and complexity.
Rutherford Cabernet Sauvingons and Bordeaux Blends garner substantial attention for their enticing fragrances of dusty earth and dried herbs, broad and juicy mid-palates and lush and fine-grained tannins. The sub-appellation claims some of the valley’s most prized vineyards today, namely Caymus, Rubicon and Beckstoffer Georges III.
It is also home to Napa’s most influential and historic personalities. Thomas Rutherford, responsible for the appellation's name, made serious investments here in grape growing and wine production between the years of 1850 to 1880. Gustave Niebaum purchased a large swath of land and completed his winery in 1887, calling it “Inglenook.” Today this remains the oldest bonded winery in California. Georges Latour founded Beaulieu Vineyard in 1900, making it the oldest continuous winery in the state. Latour also hired the famous enologist, André Tchelistcheff, a man credited for single-handedly defining the modern Napa winemaking style.