Offering quiet fruit as a foil to notes of oak, dust and dry chocolate…

Medium-bodied, with a smoky, rustic, barnyard-streak to the black cherry and tar flavors. Finishes with leathery tannins.

This cab has a soft style and resembles Merlot. A crisp, pleasant wine with tangy, bright blackberry fruit.

This, the most plentiful of Kendall-Jackson's "reserve" Cabernets, is a rounded, slightly herbal, relatively uncomplicated, mid-sized wine that is fit with attractive fruit and trim of sweetening oak. It is lightly tannic yet and could do with a few years of age…

Gobs of generous cassis, cherry and plum flavors. Nice oak.

...Kendall-Jackson's impressive Single Vineyard Series, the 1996 Buckeye Vineyard cabernet sauvignon. This is a big, elegant wine with layers of flavors and a lovely, long finish. At $65, it's a wine for dedicated cabernet fans.

…moderately full-bodied wine also displays a good degree of extract and fairly showy oak.

...it finishes with shrill acidity. and comes across as compressed and lean. It will undoubtedly dry out before it ever blossoms.

Soft but austere berry fruit

Smooth and supple, with ripe wild berry, cola and cherry flavors…

Straightforward and varietally true, this is a good all-purpose cabernet. Dark and youthful in appearance with smoky aromas, spicy plum fruit, and a creamy texture that will pair well with a variety of people and foods.

...exhibits a more saturated ruby color, and a pleasing red currant, "Petit Bordeaux"-like personality with some ripeness, medium body, and a soft style.

Ripe fruit, spice and balance.

Low-keyed fruit gets a little help here from a dusting of oaky spice.

Perhaps limited by the vintage, this wine delights with big and rich aromas while delivering wholly enjoyable but somewhat less complete flavors. Initial impressions of black currant and sweet spice scents are enhanced by creamy, somewhat toasty oak, and it is this attractive mix that shows up as the wine enters the mouth.

Has everything you expect in a Cabernet: aromas of cocoa, cedar, berry, and oak, with good structure, silky flavors and a nice finish.

Rich and outgoing even in its youth, this well-endowed wine speaks very much to the juicy, fully ripened fruit that marks the better wines of the vintage. Its abundant cherry and cassis qualities are infused with a balanced bit of rich oak, and, while fairly firm and a little hot in the latter going, it hangs on to its fundamental fruit and never dies. Appealing now for its straight-ahead fruitiness, it will only get better with time and promises positive growth for another four to six years.

Firm and intense, with a narrow band of earthy currant and cedar flavors.

Wood spice overrides both loosely defined ripe, dried cherry fruit in the nose and flavors. Round, firm and showing little tannic harshness, this likable, early-drinking table wine will be a good buy when found at discounted retail prices.

Sweet, thick and highly influenced by oak, this very ripe wine steers to dryness on the palate despite a bit of glycerin fatness on entry. Finishing with a little more toughness and a little less fruit than might be ideal, it nonetheless achieves a good measure of richness and will pair nicely with simple steaks and chops over the coming three or four years.

Purple ruby. Medium-bodied. Balanced acidity. Moderately extracted and oaked. Cloves, coffee, black fruits. Well concentrated, with soft textured but ample tannins and a subdued finish. Seems somewhat closed at present.

One has to give credit to Kendall-Jackson. As a winery, its major focus is on large-production bottlings under its Vintner's Reserve program. Yet, in its Grand Reserves and its host of expensive labels (Hartford Court, Stonestreet, Edmeades, Pepi), it often comes up with wines of special beauty. Here, the wine fights a good battle with the vintage tendency toward shallowness by finding enough ripe fruit to fill its somewhat open, medium-full-bodied frame. High in richness and suppleness, it will deliver great joy over the next four to seven years but is a question mark if held longer.