Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This lovely wine offers a generous grip of earth, bay leaf and dried herb, with a lively undertone of fresh acidity. Structured, complex and ageworthy, it shows power and concentration in flavors of dark cherry, dust and coffee. Cellar Selection
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Wine & Spirits
Tom Hinde focuses this wine on the Morisoli Vineyard, a prime benchland site in Rutherford. The 2018 starts out clean and rich, with sweet black raspberry flavors and bold strokes of oak. Return a day or two later, and the wine has emerged from that primary fruit and oak, moving toward scents of roses and Middle Eastern spice. The fruit turns toward black sour cherries while the tannins cushion the tapestry of flavors of scents. It’s the kind of tannic beauty that is original to Rutherford.
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James Suckling
Aromas of blackberries, plums, dried herbs, bark, mocha and cola. It’s full-bodied with fine tannins. Rich, layered and fleshy with fruity character on the center-palate and a herbal finish with excellent length. Drink from 2023.
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Wine Spectator
Frankly ripe, with a burst of boysenberry and mulberry fruit flavors backed by a second wave of melted licorice and sweet toast. Polished along the edges, with a flicker of savory through the finish to keep this honest. Best from 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.
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.