The 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Rockfall is a darker saturated red color and starts to show the more savory depth of this area, with notes of savory black olive, graphite, blackcurrants, wild forest herbs, and polished leather. The palate is full and structured and is holding on to its more chiseled tension, though it’s starting to come together and is long on the palate. It’s fantastic now, though it should have plenty of life ahead of it. Drink 2025-2040. This wine has a more angular and chiseled feel in this vintage, whereas the Christopher’s has more plush, elegant suppleness.

Boasting a saturated purple/red color, the 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Speciale is pretty on the nose, with deep notes of crème de cassis, lavender, graphite, fresh tobacco, and minty forest herbs. Full-bodied and ample on the palate, its mountainous savory notes build with an expansive feel and are joined by notes of smoked tea leaf and turned earth. It’s long on the palate and in need of time, but it will be well-matched with well-marbled steak or braised pork. Drink 2030-2050.

A deeper, saturated purple color, the 2021 Helena Dakota Vineyard is sourced from a more insulated and protected site with a lower elevation compared to the Helena Montana Vineyard, featuring alluvial clay soils, and is also entirely Cabernet Sauvignon. It offers resinous and deeper notes of blackcurrants, pressed sage, pencil lead, menthol, and floral perfume. The palate is full-bodied and broad-shouldered, with great energy driven by a fresh spine of acidity, ripe tannins, and a long, salty, and sanguine finish. It’s the most tense and coiled at this early stage of tasting and will take time to soften and fully open. Drink: 2027-2050.

It's a brilliant wine, it delivers on the promise of some of Napa's most talented mountain Cabernet winemakers who have come to Walla Walla. An elegance leaps forth from the glass with brilliant forest character, savoury herbs, bay leaf, hatch pepper, and elements of singed violets. The palate has beautiful depth with immediate approachability but a real sense of freshness and place. What a soaring example of Cabernet from one of Washington's most exciting new brands. Jett is a Washington winemaking project based in Walla Walla by the Jackson Family. Gianna Ghilarducci leads the winemaking in collaboration with mentor Chris Carpenter, and Rafael Jimenez oversees the vineyard management and all of the Jackson projects under Chris Carpenter in Napa.

100% Roussanne taken from Yangarra’s oldest Roussanne planting. 46% of the final blend was fermented on skins and remained on skins for around 7 months before pressing with only the free run juice retained. The other portion was whole bunch basket pressed into ceramic and fermented without skins. The final blend was exclusively matured in ceramic for a further 4 months. This is what I refer to as a ‘journey wine’. It takes you on a ride as it unfolds and shapeshifts in the glass with each version an improvement on the last. It’s an embarrassment of riches when it comes to complexity. This opens with sweet pops of honeysuckle and orange blossom before a savoury cut through of green almond and pistachio. Time in the glass reveals white peach, subtle dried apricot and orange peel tea along with a saline twang of pickled vegetables, some herbaceous sage leaf and a suggestion of white pepper. There’s an underlay of leesy complexity adding to the smorgasbord of character, too. A classy display. The palate is at once powerful and restrained with a lovely bite of preserved lemon teaming up with green almond to bring bitter appeal alongside Meyer lemon, pear and orange oil. The phenolics are febrile and pithy, holding sway and constricting the palate as it all carries to very long and detailed length. A phenomenal release.

100% Grenache sourced from Black 31 at 210 elevation – the highest section of the 1946 planted bush vine Grenache, which also has the deepest sandy soils. Here we have the pinnacle Grenache release from Yangarra. It’s perhaps a comparatively diaphanous release in the context of High Sands, though not to a fault. This is a classy wine of dimension, depth and endless character that will reward mightily with time in cellar. The depth to the aromas is instantly compelling while also wonderfully restrained – warm sand and mulch notes quickly make way for white pepper, cranberry, red cherry and raspberry compote. A swirl of the glass accentuates a fine mineral detail along with floral musk, brown spice and a lurking orange peel tang. This is at once savoury and pretty, demure and charming – such is its sophistication. The palate is intense but furled, sitting high in the mouth with red fruits aplenty while firm, febrile tannins provide anchor. Raspberry, red apple, cherry pit minerality, red rose, cranberry and orange peel are pulled into a corset of those stacked and powdery nebbiolo-like tannins which frame it all up and draw the wine to wonderful, poised length. Yangarra’s trajectory with this grape in this region is stratospheric. That’s not opinion—it’s fact.

The 2022 Proprietary Red Wine is a blend of 23% Cabernet Sauvignon, 16% Cabernet Franc, 17% Malbec, 37% Merlot, and 7% Petit Verdot. Deep garnet-purple in color, it comes bounding out with exuberant notes of juicy black cherries, boysenberry preserves, and potpourri, followed by hints of tilled soil and garrigue. The full-bodied palate delivers an impactful backbone of firm, grainy tannins and bold freshness to match the muscular black fruit, finishing long and fragrant.

Retail $35. Super clear, barely any hue at all in the glass. The classic provençal nose of subtle red fruit and white flower. Wonderful on the palate, just a delight. Sure, it’s subtle and reserved but near impeccable balance with lovely fruit and an acidity that persists for days.

This is pale in the glass, fragrant, expressly savoury and built on an energetic tension of fine tannin and vigorous acidity. This has a little more flesh and fruitfulness than the Ovitelli, but it’s neither particularly fleshy nor fruitful. And there’s much charm in that. Red cherry and sour black cherry, dried rose petals, Baharat spicing, pomegranate, clove, mace, dried orange peel and warm concrete, struck rock – it’s one of those wines that I just can’t stop smelling, so beguiling is the perfume. The structure is just as compelling, with insistent sandy, chalky tannins and a seam of electric acidity pulling the flavours long. Utterly individual and absolutely world class.

From original '46 vines next to the High Sands block. The '23 grenache wines are very pale in the glass, and they are all a degree lighter in alcohol due to the cool year (one I love). A vintage like this really illustrates the kinship with the avant-garde grenache of Gredos, and with Barbaresco, and refined Etna Rosso (Girolamo Russo in particular), rather than almost anything from the Rhône. Savoury, dried red fruits, cranberry, cherry and redcurrant, warm terracotta, bergamot, potpourri, sumac, ground cinnamon, star anise, so tightly coiled, but also tensile, finely expansive in its flavour delivery. There’s tension aplenty, and it promises to unfurl over a long life. Superb.

Predominantly from the oldest roussanne planting, a 1ha block, with a small parcel (15%) from younger vines for fragrance. The compression of power is becoming a key feature of what is one of Australia’s finest white wines. It’s refreshing to see the varietal hegemony of the usual suspects being consistently challenged. This, from a celebrated cool year, is at the start of a long and promising journey, somewhat shy, but layered with interest. Green almond, pear, pickled peach, pineapple quince, lemon balm, mint, young sage, oyster shell and a rocky, pumice-like mineral note, which is echoed by the ultrafine pithiness of the palate. It’s another superb release, but it’s one that needs a little time to settle into its long stride.

55/17/17/7/4% grenache blanc/grenache gris/roussanne/clairette/bourboulenc. Some grenache blanc and roussanne was fermented on skins for around seven months (47% of the finished blend). The remaining fruit was basket pressed. Texture. For me, it’s the defining point of this wine. Oh, I love the hard-to-pin-down flavours that drift through orchard fruits and citrus, suggest a piney and briny herbal note – like a sea breeze gliding through a cypress tree – and are further complexed with a hint of cracked fennel seed and white pepper. But it’s the texture that really elevates this, the frisson of pumiceous (it’s a word …) grip and succulent fruit, the sapid, mineral/tonic quality, the elegant tensioning, fine-tuned to perfection. What a delight.

22 was a cool year that produced some reticent but excellent grenache, while shiraz seemed to sail through untroubled. This is an infant, of course, but there’s a ready appeal not always seen at this stage, a meshing of red, blue and black fruits – ripe raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, tart boysenberry, red plum, black olive – with an overlay of baking spices, iodine, coffee grounds and beef bouillon. And iron, yes. It’s on the label. In the ground. In the wine. Here, the wine benefits from that soil transfer being elegant, filigreed, not rugged. It needs a little time to be its best, but it’s a superb release.

51% Cabernet Sauvignon 49% Shiraz. Handpicked, destemmed and fermented separately and basket pressed. 17 days on skins for the Cabernet Sauvignon and matured for 15 months in Bordeaux barriques. 20 days on skins for Shiraz and barrelled down to 1-2 year old seasoned French and Austrian oak puncheons for 8 months with additional 10 months in seasoned foudre. The very finest parcels were selected and bottled. A rigorous winemaking explanation and deservedly as everything is meticulously weighted in both the vineyard and winemaking for Hickinbotham. Two worlds meet here and I’m not talking about Australia and the USA. It’s a wine that evokes both our past and future. Nostalgia is plucked from deep within with the kinship of the two varieties. Rhubarb, mulberry and red figs with an outline of blackberries and thyme. The beauty of the site plays an integral part too, providing depth and intensity of fruit and savoury coffee spice. This is a Claret that pays homage to days of old but made with oak consciousness and poise of tomorrow. The rapport between Cabernet and Shiraz is firmly established here and in drinking it, you’ll find any disagreeable thoughts put to rest, or at least till after you are done enjoying it. A truly beautiful wine. Drink now or in 10-12 years preferably with lamb backstrap with a pepper berry crust.

The outstanding 2022 ‘Walla Walla Valley’ Cabernet Sauvignon comes from the Leonetti Estate as well as the Seven Hills and Skysill Vineyards. Inky in the glass this shows off great depth and concentration. Dense dark fruits parade with tobacco leaf, dried herbs and shades of graphite with great stony essence. Drink 2025-2044

Gorgeous and silky, the 2022 Jett ‘Horse Heaven Hills’ Cabernet Sauvignon comes from the Andrews and Phinny Hill Vineyards. Jet black in the glass, this offers deep, concentrated black Frits that mingle well with blueberry compote, espresso grounds and shades of loamy soils on the palate. This has well-defined power and finesse. Drink 2025-2042-

The 2022 'Red Mountain’ comes from the Quintessence and Shaw Vineyards. Sweet pipe tobacco and anise mark the nos alongside shades of black currant compote. The palate is dense and delicious with serious verve and tension. Very nervy and heady with great concentration and finesse, this really needs about a year of bottle time to settle. Drink 2026-2045

‘I make a block 6 or 14 every year. When I'm tasting through the cellar, I feel like I just have to do this bottling,’ says winemaker Shane Moore. Elevage is 18 months in oak, with forest-borne
notes of fir tips and pine sap, blood orange, wild violets, and penny royal mint. The brilliance of this wine is splendid; it's the last pick each year at Zena Crown, and it retains an astonishing freshness. Fresh fruits show Classically Oregon, with taut pomegranate pulp and purity. It is a
gorgeous wine with blood orange and candied raspberries.

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.