Winemaker Notes
The 2018 vintage produced a stunning wine from the Beckstoffer Georges III site. Bright red fruits and toasted fennel seed aromas introduce a palate bursting with sweet cherry, red plums, fresh blue fruits, and savory dried herbs. This wine has extraordinary presence – limitless fresh energy coiled into a polished structure of superfine tannins and outstanding natural grace. Fresh cherry compote and Santa Rosa plum linger throughout the vibrant, enduring finish.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
A textbook expression of this site, the 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Beckstoffer Georges III Vineyard boasts a deep purple/plum color to go with a darker, earthy bouquet of blackcurrants, smoked tobacco, chocolate, and graphite. This carries to a full-bodied, deep, powerful wine that packs serious richness and depth while staying light and graceful, with a beautiful sense of elegance and purity. It's a magical Cabernet from this vineyard that's going to benefit from 2-4 years of bottle age and keep for 25+ years or more. Hats off to winemaker Julien Fayard!
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The deep garnet-purple colored, 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon George III Vineyard offers up flamboyant notes of blackcurrant pastilles, blueberry preserves and chocolate-covered cherries with suggestions of stewed plums, eucalyptus, fertile loam and tapenade with a waft of cedar. Full-bodied, concentrated and opulently styled in the mouth, the palate is packed with black fruit preserves, framed by firm, grainy tannins and seamless freshness, finishing long and spicy,
Rating: 97+
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.