Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This is in a great spot right now, with a detailed core that sports a mix of red and black currant and cherry fruit inlaid with lively tobacco, orange peel, cedar and earth accents. There’s also apple wood, black tea and incense on the finish. Very long—and still with a bit of grip to shed too. No rush.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This is one of the finest Opus Ones to date, offering a dark ruby/purple color, as well as a striking, intense bouquet of sweet licorice intermixed with blackberries, cassis, plums, and saddle leather. This seamless, full-bodied wine is more velvety-textured, opulent, and succulent than past vintages. The mid-palate is expansive and chewy. The long finish is filled with glycerin, ripe fruit, and sweet tannin. Drink this impressive, user-friendly yet richly concentrated effort over the next 15 years.
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Decanter
The 1996 Opus One reveals an intense and expressive bouquet of black cherries, plums, cassis and spices; the prelude to a rich, textural and quite densely extracted palate impression with some firm tannins on the back end. By the mid-1990s, Opus One saw considerably longer macerations than was the case in the 1980s, and than is the case today, so their tannic profiles tend to be rather more monolithic. While the 1996 blend includes Malbec, which first became a component of Opus One in 1994, it is also the last Opus One not to include any Petit Verdot, a grape that has been part of the blend ever since 1997.
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.