Winemaker Notes
Blend: 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Cabernet Franc, 4% Carmenere, 2% Petit Verdot
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Here is one of the stars of this challenging vintage. A muscular wine, leading with tremendous freshness on the palate, restrained red-toned fruit, and very subtle yet elegant cedar wood intermixed with red-rock minerality. Medium to full-bodied, offering more black fruit on the palate, redolent of muddled blackberries and juicy plums. An iron fist in a velvet glove comes to mind, given the tannin texture, which leads with the furry, velvety side of the glove and transitions to an undercurrent of ironclad and dusty minerals. All this turns fresh and lively through the finish. Perhaps a bit hot on the alcohol, but this will soften soon enough—absolutely one of the more riveting wines of the entire vintage. I had the chance to taste this wine at Quintessa with Rebekah Wineburg, Winemaker and Rodrigo Soto, General Manager, and it was the last in a lineup of wines going back to the 1994 vintage, and it showed all I have written -- Wineburg and Soto are so finely in tuned with Quintessa’s vineyards that it’s almost no surprise they devised such a beautiful wine through such a difficult year, battling fires and dealing with obstacles related to the pandemic. Seek this out.
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James Suckling
A lovely red with a pretty core of currants, berries, spices and mushrooms. Medium to full body, layers of polished tannins and a juicy finish. A very balanced and fine wine. A little chewy.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2020 Proprietary Red is another rock-solid 2020 that has the vintage's dense, compact feel while staying balanced. Red and black currants, mulberries, iron, leather, and violet notes define the nose, and it's medium to full-bodied, has a layered, elegant mouthfeel, and outstanding length. The blend is 87% Cabernet Sauvignon, 7% Cabernet Franc, 4% Carmenere, and the rest Petit Verdot that spent 22 months in 60% new oak.
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.