Winemaker Notes
Blend: 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Cabernet Franc
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
This blend of 80% Cabernet Sauvignon and 20% Cabernet Franc comes from the 10-hectare Profile Vineyard in Conn Valley. The flagship wine is crafted through a meticulous barrel selection from the vineyard’s 17 distinct blocks, assembled about six months after harvest. The 2021 vintage was aged for 26 months in 80% new French oak. Elegant, polished, and complex, the wine leads with a mix of red, black, and blue-toned fruits accented by pure, pristine sagebrush and bay laurel notes. Full-bodied yet expressive, the palate showcases a panoply of fruit character and mineral intensity, layered with elegant floral notes that add depth and refinement. Its complexity is supported by fine-grained, firm tannins that provide a solid foundation for its expressivity. The finish is long and captivating, with dark currant fruit emerging alongside espresso bean and mocha nuances. This wine is of exceptional balance, structure, and sophistication, embodying the vineyard’s distinctive character and the winemaker’s precision.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Based on 78% Cabernet Sauvignon and 22% Cabernet Franc, the 2021 Profile Red Wine sports a deep, inky hue as well as powerful aromatics of black fruits, scorched earth, graphite, and smoked tobacco. A rich, concentrated barrel sample, it has lots of ripe tannins, beautiful overall balance, and outstanding length. This serious, age-worthy wine will need 7-8 years of bottle age and should age gracefully.
Barrel Sample: 95-97 -
Wine Spectator
Offers the vivid and alluring fruit of the vintage, showing lovely notes of mulberry, blackberry and cassis that are rich and stylish as they glide along, with hints of warmed anise, apple wood and violet. A cocoa accent adds a toasty edge to the finish, along with a late tug of warm earth, but the fruit wins out easily. Impressive. Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. Best from 2026 through 2038.
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James Suckling
A broad, generous, full-bodied and well-saturated red made from 80% cabernet sauvignon and 20% cabernet franc this year. Blended from the best barrels of estate-grown wines in the Merryvale cellar. Tempting to drink now for its black cherries and dark chocolate, but it will surely gain more complexity and smoothness with time. Drinkable now, but best from 2030.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
An all-estate blend of 80% Cabernet Sauvignon and 20% Cabernet Franc, the 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Profile spent 22 months in 80% new French oak. Delicate floral notes add a welcome flourish to the cassis and black cherry fruit on the nose, while the palate is full-bodied, concentrated, tannic but silky, with a lingering, softly dusty finish. It should have two decades of ageability.
Rating: 94+
Undoubtedly proving its merit over and over, Napa Valley is a now a leading force in the world of prestigious red wine regions. Though Cabernet Sauvignon dominates Napa Valley, other red varieties certainly thrive here. Important but often overlooked include Merlot and other Bordeaux varieties well-regarded on their own as well as for their blending capacities. Very old vine Zinfandel represents an important historical stronghold for the region and Pinot noir is produced in the cooler southern parts, close to the San Pablo Bay.
Perfectly situated running north to south, the valley acts as a corridor, pulling cool, moist air up from the San Pablo Bay in the evenings during the hot days of the growing season, which leads to even and slow grape ripening. Furthermore the valley claims over 100 soil variations including layers of volcanic, gravel, sand and silt—a combination excellent for world-class red wine production.