Winemaker Notes
Blend: 100% Cabernet Sauvignon
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
Refined tannin and integrated fruit mark this lovely, full-bodied wine, which is 100% varietal and made in tiny amounts. Leather, tobacco and cedar highlight a lengthy and elegant core seething in cassis and currant, with a touch of oak and dark chocolate on the finish.
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Jeb Dunnuck
Coming from a site on Pritchard Hill, the 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Artalade Montagna Vineyards is pure Mountain fruit and reveals a powerful, dense, primordial style that's going to reward bottle age. Dense purple, with impressive purity in its blueberry and black cherry fruits, it offers more tobacco, graphite, and crushed stone-like minerality with time in the glass. Rich, medium to full-bodied, and concentrated on the palate, it wasn't until the second day that this started to offer some complexity and charm, and it's going to require a solid decade of bottle age to hit the early stages of maturity. It will have 30 years or more of ultimate longevity.
Rating:95+ -
James Suckling
Fragrant aromas of wild blackberry, blackcurrant leaf, pine, clove and licorice. Crushed walnut and graphite, too. It’s full-bodied, rich and polished with firm, integrated tannins. Serious depth and complexity. Very typical Napa style. Wait a few years. Drink from 2024.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Deep garnet-purple in color, the 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Artalade Vineyard bursts from the glass with notes of blueberry compote, baked plums, Black Forest cake and crème de cassis with hints of expresso, licorice and charcoal. The full-bodied palate is packed with black fruit preserves with a refreshing backbone and grainy texture, finishing on a lingering earthy note.
Rating:94+ -
Wine Spectator
Very inviting, showing a creamy feel throughout as cassis, plum and raspberry notes glide through, with light hints of anise, violet and apple wood. This is well-structured through the finish, but the fruit keeps the upper hand easily. Best from 2023 through 2035.
Wines, like people, are a reflection of their origin and evolution. The Debate are Napa Valley wines crafted by respected winemaker Jean Hoefliger (Lynch-Bages, Newton Vineyard, Alpha Omega, AXR, Harbison and many others). The Debate focuses on the unique terroirs of single vineyard sites for Cabernet Sauvignon & Cabernet Franc exclusively.
The Debate began in 2010 when two friends brought their unique perspectives together to create thought provoking and delicious wines that extend beyond the sense of taste to the thrill of telling stories and the art of listening. By selecting three different vineyards with three different expressions of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, the Debate seeks to point out the diversity of terroir as well as the diversity of people.
We live in an age where less and less time is spent at the dinner table discussing these different points of view. The Debate mission is to bring people together to share a glass of wine to discuss and debate just as our team does. Every vintage of The Debate is wrapped in newspaper with “The Debates” of the vintage. Whether its politics, sports, pop-culture or world events, you have the opportunity to reminisce a time, a place and a vintage in history with the people around you.
One of the most prestigious wines of the world capable of great power and grace, Napa Valley Cabernet is a leading force in the world of fine, famous, collectible red wine. Today the Napa Valley and Cabernet Sauvignon are so intrinsically linked that it is difficult to discuss one without the other. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that this marriage came to light; sudden international recognition rained upon Napa with the victory of the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon in the 1976 Judgement of Paris.
Cabernet Sauvignon undoubtedly dominates Napa Valley today, covering half of the land under vine, commanding the highest prices per ton and earning the most critical acclaim. Cabernet Sauvignon’s structure, acidity, capacity to thrive in multiple environs and ability to express nuances of vintage make it perfect for Napa Valley where incredible soil and geographical diversity are found and the climate is perfect for grape growing. Within the Napa Valley lie many smaller sub-AVAs that express specific characteristics based on situation, slope and soil—as a perfect example, Rutherford’s famous dust or Stags Leap District's tart cherry flavors.