A specific block towards the bottom of the site of Dijon 76 clone Chardonnay makes this wine. ‘There's something about this block that just turns the Chardonnay to 11 for me; I think it's those clay soils,’ says Shane Moore, Gran Moraine winemaker. This wine releases in January 2026. I strive to put this wine on the edge of reduction, which builds for the first five to seven years and then starts to come back around. The aromatics are border opulence, with honeyed peaches,
concentrated Meyer lemon pulp, and a sweet note of candied orange. Gorgeous and flinty across the palate, with layers of stony, complex mineral edges that frame the core of citrus
cream nicely. A stunning lemon tang to the finish with salted lemon that lingers seemingly forever on the tongue

Two south-facing blocks at 500 feet on a very steep slope, 115 and 667, make up the Cascade. Performing the fermentation on the open top manages the tannins, which winemaker Shane Moore says can be an issue in this block. With soaring red and blue berries, this wine wows in the aromatics, a note of Oregon truffle and a gorgeous forest-driven depth. The palate offers fleshy blue fruits while singing with an elegance that balances the beauty of the fruit with a definitive power to boot: violets, sweet Oregon blackberries and a dollop of freshly chopped mint. Performing the fermentation on the open top manages the tannins, which winemaker Shane
Moore says can be an issue in this block. With soaring red and blue berries, this wine wows in
the aromatics, a note of Oregon truffle and a gorgeous forest-driven depth. The palate offers
fleshy blue fruits while singing with an elegance that balances the beauty of the fruit with a
definitive power to boot: violets, sweet Oregon blackberries and a dollop of freshly chopped
mint.

A beautifully layered and complex wine that wraps generous tannins around lovely black fruit and subtle, smoky, graphite nuances. Blueberries and blackcurrants with hints of minerals and cocoa. Full-bodied, complex and structured for further aging. Drinkable now, but best from 2030.

Wow, so densely layered in velvety tannins and lavish black fruit. A stunning, medium-bodied wine with great power that's kept in check by the slightly austere structure and insistent tannins. Deep black cherry, blackcurrant, graphite and espresso flavors that expand on the palate and linger in the finish. Drinkable now, but best from 2030.

The nose is incredibly complex and deeply scented, with aromas of blood plums, cured meat, mulberries, blueberry bush and dried herbs. The palate is full-bodied with seamless tannins and bright acidity, giving tightly wound notes of cherry confit, iodine, ferric earth, mocha and a slight metallic finish. Exceptionally well constructed, with years ahead of it to integrate. Drink or hold. Screw cap.

Wonderfully complex and enticing notes of Meyer lemons, honeysuckle, orange blossoms and talcum powder. The palate is medium- to full-bodied with a phenolic grip from seven months on the skins, giving notes of chamomile tea, sea salt and quince. A very complex and finely integrated wine with a fresh backbone. Excellent. Drink or hold. Screw cap.

One of the most structured, focused and intense merlots in Napa Valley. So laced with super-fine-grained tannins, it’s pointed, precise, linear and concentrated. A powerful wine that will age gracefully. Deep in black cherries, red cherries, cocoa, iron and graphite notes. Contains 15% cabernet sauvignon. Drinkable now, but best from 2030.

A sleek and polished wine that's deceptively full-bodied and firmly tannic. So well balanced, silky and rich in blackcurrant, blackberry and black cherry flavors, with notes of dried blueberries, spearmint and cocoa. Contains 6% collectively of cabernet franc, merlot, petit verdot and malbec blended in for complexity. Drink or hold.

So massive and concentrated, pure and saturated, structured and long. A showcase of the Spring Mountain AVA's firmness, richness and depth. Brilliant blackcurrants, black cherries, spearmint and hints of red fruit, minerals and wild sage. Tightly interlaced tannins give great support to the lush black fruit. Drinkable now, but best from 2030.

A masterful blend of grapes from diverse parts of Napa Valley that winemaker Chris Carpenter conceived in the spirit of the Right Bank of Bordeaux. It is plush, mouth-filling and gorgeous in black fruit and intricate spices, chocolaty, yet with with a firm backbone of velvety tannins. Grapes come from four different mountains around Napa Valley, but it’s dominated by Spring Mountain fruit. Drinkable now, but best from 2030.

Complex aromas of lemon curd, candied lime zest, mandarins and flint. The palate is medium-bodied with bright acidity, giving notes of orange peel, hazelnuts, grapefruit pith, pralines and pastry. Very polished and refined with an underlying tension. Delicious. Drink or hold.

The 2021 Mt. Brave Cabernet Sauvignon is inky in the glass, offering mountain huckleberry and black raspberry notes on the nose alongside graphite and shades of dried herbs. The palate is rich and viscous with incredible underlying tension. Pencil lead, anise, creme de cassis and chocolate cake notes all combine on the palate. A joy to consume now, savor this beauty over the next twenty years to come. Drink 2024-2044- 97

An intense, linear wine. So bright, tangy and cherry-like, with great acidity lifting raspberry, cranberry, sage, chalk and rooibos tea flavors. Made with 100% whole clusters. Drink or hold.

So beautifully developed now at age nine, it's rich in marzipan, lemon creme, lemon zest and lime peel. Bright with citrus acidity, tangy, dry and appetizing in texture. What an elegant, balanced and complex wine. Drink or hold.

A very tensile, fresh and mineral-laden wine that's tangy in acidity and has an almost crunchy, lively texture. Made from a singular section of the 3-D vineyard planted with Wente and Mt. Eden clone grapevines. Lemon pith, limestone, crisp green apples. So intense and taut, it is sure to age and improve. Drinkable now but best from 2029.

Among the New World’s greatest whites. It weaves together sandy soils, a Mediterranean climate and a variety that has a salty savoriness. There’s a phenolic thread and a gentle touch of acidity. Complex texture from extended skin maceration in large ceramic eggs. Herbal tea, salted quince, lemon rind and pumice-like details. The ‘22 is the finest iteration yet. From biodynamically grown grapes. Drinkable now but best after 2028. Screw cap.

A deep, dark, ruby colour in the glass. This is a dynamite showing at 10 years of age. Pure dark berry fruits are nuanced by toasty oak spices, cocoa nibs, and dusty sagebrush. Medium-bodied, with super firm, taut, mineral-scented tannins and gorgeous black cherry and blackcurrant fruits. The finish lingers for a full 60 seconds, with spicy aromatic garrigue notes emerging. Such a youthful wine, in exceptional shape at this stage, showcasing the freshness and intensity of the vintage from the tail end of Napa’s drought years. It was aged for 28 months in 64% new French oak.

There's a twinkle in this red's eye, as its dense core of boysenberry and mulberry fruit manages to shimmer and its well-buried iron spine manages to emit some glistening light from within the core. Feels chiseled but without hard angles; feels seductive without being overly flattering. This is also remarkably young. And the flurry of black tea, anise and sweet bay on the finish is very, very alluring. Bravo. -- Blind 2014 California Cabernet retrospective (June 2024). Drink now through 2045. 499 cases made.

This is gorgeous from the get-go, with the distilled essence of mulberry, boysenberry and blackberry fruit pouring through, all harnessed by a racy iron note and flecked liberally with anise, sweet bay leaf and iris accents. The finish shows terrific cut and drive as the fruit sails through. Dense for sure, but with purity, freshness and energy. Best from 2026 through 2046. 713 cases made.

The 2021 High Sands Grenache leads with spicy oak and juicy, salty fruit. It has a salted humbug candy nature about it, alongside blonde tobacco and green tea, graphite and blood, Boscobel rose and caper brine. The wine is both lush and lean, defined by its score of very fine, profuse, chewy tannins. The discussion of fermentation/maturation vessels in Grenache is rife, with many astute palates gravitating toward egg or amphora for their purity and unfettered expression within the wines. I am less dogmatic and more inclined to swing as a weather vane does in high wind, toward cuvées that I feel express the place, regardless of their vessels. The place in this case is McLaren Vale, specifically the old High Sands bush vine block, planted in 1946. While the oak is evident in this wine, it softens the fruit and texturally creates what I perceive to be a more subtle texture and nuance within the wine. 2021 was a beautiful season in McLaren Vale, and it shows in this superb wine. This is an excellent wine, with a significant price hike this year. 14.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

From the slightly safer vineyard Ray Guerin planted for himself, and now one of Australia’s greatest pinot sites. Incredibly compressed complexity, like Shakespeare etched on the head of a pin. There’s a char siu meatiness lurking beneath bright cherry fruit. Energy, finesse and a beautifully supple mouthfeel.

This 2021 La Jota combines 82% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6.5% Cabernet Franc, 5% Malbec, 4% Merlot, and 2.5% Petit Verdot. Grapes are sourced from the 8ha La Jota vineyard and 24ha Keyes Estate Vineyard, both atop Howell Mountain. Winemaker Chris Carpenter begins with native yeast fermentations after optical sorting, then pump-overs by hand and pressing at alcohol dryness. The wine goes into a barrel where malolactic fermentation takes place—aged 22 months in 75% new French oak. All of La Jota's barrels are culled from the centre of France and Navarre, and eight different coopers provide barrels that have mostly medium-plus toasts, with some medium-range toasts for Merlot. After every pressing, Carpenter fills in whatever gaps he feels need filling by leveraging the various oak characters in his barrel toolkit. Readers should note that by the time I tasted the 2021 wines with Carpenter (including the Mt. Brave, Lokoya, and Cardinale wines), they had been decanting for about 5.5 hours. A necessary step if you're popping corks on this within five years of their release. In 2021, with yields down 30-35%, the La Jota was very precise and focused, with saturated layers of extremely dark fruit nuanced by very expressive ironstone minerality and fresh garrigue. Full-bodied with robust, broad-shouldered tannins that are chocolaty. More of that iron minerality is layered throughout, and for all the fruit density here, there is a balance of freshness that is almost hard to imagine. So, don't imagine it; snap these up and see for yourself. When I visited with winemaker Chris Carpenter, who oversees production for La Jota, Mt. Brave, Lokoya, and Cardinale, he took the time to explain the distinct difference in his approach to crafting the La Jota and Mt. Brave wines in comparison to the Lokoya single vineyard Cabernets. 'The single-vineyard Lokoya wines are mountain wines that have a good amount of tannin and are in pursuit of the expression of their individual AVA. The tannin is concentrated and differentiates each mountain expression of Cabernet. With La Jota and Mt. Brave, I'm aiming to give the drinker of these wines an understanding of how the mountain expresses itself from an acid, weight, and fruit standpoint without those powerful and ponderous tannins. These wines are culled from blocks in each of the single vineyards that typically have softer tannins, so these are ideal for restaurants or earlier drinking wines. La Jota is owned by the Jackson Family

Winemaker Chris Carpenter says that his Mt. Brave Cabernet Sauvignon from Mt. Veeder is intended to serve as a counterpoint to the La Jota Cabernet, which is from Howell Mountain, but that each wine showcases a softer expression of mountain Cabernet, and one that is poised for earlier drinking for collectors who stash bottles of the single vineyard Cabernet wines from Lokoya in their cellar. The soils atop Mt. Veeder are volcanic and sedimentary, and two sites provide the grapes for Mt. Brave. One is the Mt. Brave Vineyard, formerly Chateau Potelle Vineyard, and the site is above the fog line on the northern part of Mt. Veeder, where the soils are well-draining, and yields are generally two tons per acre in good vintages. The other is Veeder Peak Estate. Each site is about 24ha. This blend of 92% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Cabernet France, 2% Merlot, 1% Malbec, and 1% Petit Verdot was aged 23 months in 80% new French oak. Super fragrant with black fruits, black cherry, and graphite minerality with violets and cherry liqueur undertones. Full-bodied with pronounced tannins that have a chalkiness about them, balanced by very soft and supple fruit that makes this wine so approachable in its youth. An extended finish is marked by blue fruit and pronounced garrigue, blue agave syrup, sage, and crushed cocao nibs. Mt. Brave is part of the Jackson Family Wines portfolio.

The Lokoya Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon is sourced entirely from their estate-owned W.S. Keyes Vineyard at 556m. A plethora of warming brown spices like cinnamon and coriander are interlaced with cassis, black cherry, and blackberry fruits tinged with notes of liquorice and toasty oak spices redolent of sweet clove with tobacco nuances. Powerful and robust chocolaty tannins are layered with a thread of red stone volcanic minerality. Despite all the power and intensity of the tannins and mineral character, the palate finds release rather quickly because of the wine's vivid, crisp, and savoury acidity, which layers in freshness and extends the full-bodied finish. Chris Carpenter makes the Lokoya wines, and the label is owned by the Jackson Family. There are four 100% Cabernet Sauvignon wines in the portfolio, each from a different mountain: Diamond Mountain, Howell Mountain, Spring Mountain, and Mt. Veeder. The winemaking is the same for all the wines, with mostly native yeast fermentation, pump-overs by hand, malolactic fermentation in barrel and ageing for 22 months in 90% new French oak. What separates these wines is not style but place. Carpenter believes that fine Napa Valley Cabernet wines are not only defined by the soils of their sites but also by the Bay Area Pacific breezes that roll in and out daily, cooling the valley from the south to the north in the evenings and from the north to the south in the mornings. These mountains define cooling as any place in the valley and the diurnal temperature shifts at higher elevations create an equilibrium where climatic fluctuations aren't as pronounced as fruit grown below the fog lines.

At nine years of age, this has taken on some pale gold colouring. Gorgeous aromas of lanolin, really exciting with layers of nuts and lime flower. It's full-bodied, silky, elegant and fine, and so full of flavour. What an amazing wine! With its wonderful acidity, balance and impressive length, this is perfect for drinking now. From vines planted in 1999 at 175m on weathered sands and ironstone gravels in Blewitt Springs, McLaren Vale. Biodynamic.