Medium ruby-red with a bright purple tone. Raspberry, Turkish Delight and Chinese fivespice aromatics. Palate is seamless and silken: red fruits, exotic spices, dry earth and rose petals all flow across the palate, all entwined with a fine net of acidity and tannin that lifts and drives it. The never-ending finish is a chorus of fruit and spice with the finest grained but persistent tannins ensuring you keep returning to admire it.

Concentrated black fruits, kirsch and damson, this is pristine yet exuberant, full of life and pleasure, majoring on expresso, mocha, damson, cassis, cocoa bean and softer waves of rose petals and iris. Just seven vineyards provide the fruit source in this vintage, with over half located on Spring Mountain. Even 24 hours on it is very clearly still structured in its tannis architecture, suggesting you have years ahead for enjoying the wine. 100% French oak, 93% new. Christopher Carpenter winemaker, bottled unfiltered and unfined.

Just a beautiful wine, this is filled with silky smooth tannins, sage, fennel, chocolate, liquorice, bright blueberry and damson fruits, slate tannins and a juicy signoff. One of the standouts of the vertical, from a vintage that was balanced and steady, allowing for full ripeness without excessive heat spikes. Harvest 23 September to 30 September to 30 October. Throwing some deposit at this point, make sure you carafe. Christopher Carpenter winemaker, bottled unfiltered and unfined. All estate vineyard grapes, from six vineyard sites, dominant Mount Veeder.

The 2019 ‘Le Desir’ combines Cabernet Franc (83%) with the remainder Merlot, Malbec and Cabernet Sauvignon. This shows beautiful red rose petals on the nose with suggestions of baking spices, anise and Turkish coffee. The palate is deep and heady with incredible intensity and a hedonistic bent. This is a total stunner. Drink 2025-2050.

The 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Spring Mountain District is another incredible effort, revealing a dense purple hue and a kaleidoscope-like array of cassis, violets, spring flowers, and tobacco leaf, as well as full-bodied richness and ripe, velvety tannins. It has perfectly integrated oak, tannins, and acidity, flawless balance, and the class to benefit from 4-5 years in the cellar and evolve for 25-30 years.

Another prime example of the genius of Chris Carpenter, the 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain reveals a deep, saturated purple hue as well as textbook Howell Mountain black fruits, scorched earth, savory herbs, bay leaf, and dark chocolate. It's a powerful, structured, full-bodied Cabernet offering remarkable purity as well as overall balance and equilibrium. Hide bottles for 4-5 years (if not longer) and enjoy over the following 25-30 years.

Another incredibly concentrated, focused, insanely impressive wine in the lineup is the 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain, which offers a powerful nose of darker currants, scorched earth, graphite, and savory herb aromas and flavors. This full-bodied, dense, concentrated, powerful, inward beauty needs 4-6 years in the cellar but will age forever.

The 2021 Red Wine is mostly Merlot yet includes a splash of other Bordeaux varieties. It's a fleshy, full-bodied, concentrated Merlot yet nevertheless has remarkable purity and elegance, with ultra-fine tannins. Ripe black cherries, chocolate, leafy herbs, and tobacco notes give this an almost Pomerol-like style, and while it's just about impossible to resist today, I see no reason it shouldn't evolve for 20+ years if well stored.

The 2021 Cabernet Franc is a more elegant, almost Old World style expression of this incredible variety, and it's every bit as impressive as the Red Blend. Coming from Spring and Diamond Mountain sites, it has a gorgeous array of red, blue, and black fruits with some classic Cabernet Franc orange blossom, black tea, and floral nuances. This medium to full-bodied, ultra-pure, seamless, incredibly elegant 2021 can be drunk today or cellared for two decades.

Black berry, black olive, violet, iron, and bark aromas. Full-bodied with a solid center palate of fruit and tannins. Flavorful finish. Love the flavors and length. A blend of 78% merlot and 22% cabernet sauvignon. 323 cases produced. Try after 2027.

Black currant, dried flower, fresh lavender, lead pencil, mint, thyme, and pine cone aromas. Pine needle. Full-bodied with firm and chewy tannins that run the length of the wine but also have a softness to them. Pure merlot. 191 cases produced. Give this five or six years to come together but a star in the making.

Black currant, violet, subtle grape skin, violet and mountain flower aromas. Medium to full body, with super polished tannins that are finely velvety, long and consistent. Sophisticated and complex. Made from 100% cabernet sauvignon.

Black currants and baking spices with sweet tobacco and violets on the nose. The palate is full-bodied with tight-grained and well-integrated tannins that melt into the wine. The pine needle, fresh earth and forest flower character comes through clearly. One for the cellar but it will be beautiful in two or three years. Made from 100% cabernet sauvignon.

This wine is exciting. Its inception came when Jess Jackson asked Pierre Seillan to experiment with Cabernet Sauvignon after finding success with Verité's Merlot-based La Muse wine. The cuvée, sourced for numerous plots throughout four appellations, yielded what Seillan called ‘La Joie’ - joy on his nose and palate. Every whiff and every sip reveals something new: violets, tobacco, white pepper, dried herbs, raspberry, and so much more. No matter how many layers you peel back, another one is underneath. Wildly fresh with grippy tannins that grab your attention in a good way, this wine is multi-dimensional. Simply excellent.

An opaque and inky black into purple, the 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Speciale is classic and plush, with layers of fresh leather, blackcurrant, pine, and forest floor. Fullbodied and refined, with ripe velvety tannins and a plush cushion of savory fruit, sage, mocha, and turned soil, it has a long, wonderful finish and delivers freshness throughout.
This is prime for cellaring for several years and drinking over the following 2-3 decades

From a 2ha block; berry-sorted, crushed into 675L ceramic eggs; on skins for 133
days, in the eggs for 13 months. A scented rose petal and spice bouquet lays the
scene for an intense yet diaphanous palate that oozes layer upon layer of richness.

The 2019 Pinot Noir La Crête is a powerful, expressive wine. Very spicy to begin, the nose explodes with cola, tea leaves, charcuterie,pipe tobacco and dark spices over a deep core of raspberry jam.The medium-bodied palate is powerful yet elegantly structured with a frame of powdery tannins, bright bursts of mouth watering acidity and continually unwinding, spicy accents on the extended finish. There's a sense of latency to this wine that suggests graceful evolution in bottle over the next 10-15 years. This will be releasedin April of 2023.

Pale ruby-purple, the 2018 Pinot Noir Slope takes some time in the glass to reveal scents of cranberry sauce, orange peel, charcuterie and flinty streaks that make the generosity on the palate all the more surprising. Medium-bodied, it's bursting with layer after layer of concentrated, savory fruit and is loaded with floral perfume.Grainy and fresh, it offers a harmonious structural balance and glides effortlessly into an incredibly long, detailed finish. Wow!

Medium deep crimson. Lifted dried roses strawberry graphite aromas with hint of musky notes. Well-balanced wine with voluminous strawberry raspberry, musky plum fruits. Fine loose knit chalky textures, superb mid-palate density and integrated mineral acidity. Superb layered wine with wonderful fruit complexity and energy. Drink now - 2034.

The 2020 Syrah from Ex Post Facto is lovely at this youthful stage, made without new oak and sourced mainly from the Santa Maria Valley (although moving forward, winemaker Greg Brewer says fruit will come instead from the Sta. Rita Hills). Medium ruby-purple, it offers blackcurrants, dried red cherries and incredible natural spice, like black licorice, cocoa powder, cracked pepper and lilac. The palate is stunning, offering powerful, spicy fruit supported by generous freshness and powdery tannins, and it finishes with great length and definition. Wow!

The Diatom 2021 Chardonnay has inviting poached pears, quince and lemongrass aromas with touches of baker's yeast, honeycomb and acacia. The medium-bodied palate balances generous, exotic fruits and a touch of textural grip with bright waves of acidity, finishing long and flavorful. This Chardonnay is dynamic and so delicious!

The 2020 Chardonnay 3D features delicate, precise aromas this vintage: lemongrass, candied citrus and white peach are complemented by deeper wafts of matchstick and honeycomb. Medium-bodied, its generous, ripe citrus flavors are enlivened by bursts of mouthwatering acidity and anchored by a gentle textural grip, and it finishes with exotic, alluringly herbal flavors and great length. Such a singular expression this vintage!

Luxurious aromas of red cherry sorbet, strawberry, light tar, dark mint and a slightly dank herb are cut by smashed stone on the incredibly complex nose of this bottling, arguably this brand’s best of this vintage. A bright, tonguetingling, long-lingering acidity sails through forest floor and tarragon flavors that give complexity to that core of ripe red cherry on the palate.

Intricate aromas of kirsch, tobacco, potpourri, pine forest, and smoky cedar. Massively powerful and concentrated dark fruit gives buoyancy to this brooding Cabernet. Firm, fine woody tannins lay a solid foundation for a wine that keeps giving through layers of wet river stones, underbrush, herbs, dried currants and walnut husks. A very precise wine with the freshness of a cool, crisp Spring Mountain morning.

Powerfully aromatic black fruits, dried herbs, dark-roast coffee beans, toasty oak and dried flowers. Full-throttle, structured and dense, with firm, elongated tannins and compact black-toned fruits, scorched earth, iron shavings and crushed cocoa nibs. A long finish of brandied spiced cherries. Since 1995, Lokoya has produced Cabernet from the Veeder Peak Estate at 548m on the western ridges of the Mayacamas Mountains.