Winemaker Notes
The VIADER blend captures an ideal balance between Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. The Cabernet Franc contributes to the early approachability, elegant structure and violet-like aromatics while the Cabernet Sauvignon adds complexity and character as well as providing the backbone structure for long aging potential. VIADER is made from the finest selection of our hillside estate on Howell Mountain.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This lush wine epitomizes the modern Napa style of soft richness and extreme drinkability when young. Made from Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc, it's beautiful now for its blackberry, black currant, dark chocolate and cedar flavors. For all its approachability, it should age well for the next six to eight years.
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Connoisseurs' Guide
This complex and decidedly sophisticated effort comes without the slightest suggestion of swagger, and it is instead a compact and keenly balanced bottling that only gradually gives up its gifts. It smacks of cherries, ripe raspberries and currants with glimmers of sweet cream and cola showing up here and there, and, if overtaken by eleventh-hour astringency just now, its ample fruit exhibits fine staying power and is a guarantor of a decade or more of certain improvement.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2007, a similar blend, is made in the same mold, with striking elegance, slightly sweeter fruit, and more aromatic ripeness and projection, thanks to better vintage material. This is a well-balanced, understated, gracious wine to drink now and over the next 15 years.
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.