Inglenook Cabernet Sauvignon (375ML half-bottle) 2006

Professional Ratings

• 91 Wine & Spirits
  This is 100 percent cabernet sauvignon selected from the Cohn and Chateau vineyards on Francis Ford Coppola's Rubicon Estate. It's aged in 500-liter American oak puncheons, referencing the larger format oak John Daniel, Jr., used for his Cask wines of the 1950's. This is a plump wine, filled with bosky cherry flavors and the bright light of acidity to cut some of the sweetness of the fruit. The finish heads toward figginess, chewy, generous and smooth. For roast rack of lamb.
• 90 Wine Enthusiast
  An elegant, complex 100% Cab, solid and potent, although it's also young and fresh in tannins and needs time in the cellar. Not showing particular finesse now, with straightforward cherry, blackberry and currant flavors, but has the balanced stuffing for the cellar.
• 90 Connoisseurs' Guide
  If this wine is meant as the little brother to the winery's expensive flagship bottling, it is doing a fine job of keeping up the family tradition of big, rich, boldly structured wines. Its handsomely cast aromas of cassis, sweet loam, rooty spice, caramel and hints of herbs that hide in the background even while adding their own bits of layering are carried by the deeply wrought fruit that holds everything together both here and in the wine's still developing flavors. Time in the cellar is needed to soften the tannins that are so integral to its makeup.