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2018 Rutherford Estate Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon

  • 92
    92

$135.00

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Tasting Notes

Deep hues of purple and red illustrate the density of this wine. Red cherry, plum, and raspberry, and goji berries encompass nuances of coffee, black pepper, a hint of graphite, and toasted oak. Sweet ripe blackberry and plum dominate with integrations of anise and charred oak. This is a centered wine with nice texture.

Technical Note

Winemaking

The fruit was hand-harvested in the cool morning hours and brought to the winery in half-ton bins. At the winery, the clusters were sorted using a double sorting system. First, the clusters were sorted by hand. The fruit then ran through a small de-stemmer that removed stems from the grapes before the individual berries being sorted to ensure that the ideal grapes were chosen. These berries were delivered to a fermenter where there was a period of resting on skins. Warm fermentation temperatures were encouraged along with gentle cap maceration to achieve the desired color and structure for the wine before an extended maceration time on skins prior final pressing. The wine was transferred directly to barrel for 19 months of maturation.

Thirty five percent of the sorted berries used in this blend was fermented in small French tanks, thirty one percent of the sorted berries were fermented in small concrete tanks, and nineteen percent of the berries were fermented in new French oak barrels, all to add layers of complexity to the wine.

Accolades

92 Points, Wine Spectator – Ripe and compact, with good energy from start to finish, giving the range of boysenberry and black fruit flavors with sassafras and anise details an enticing vibrancy. Delicious.

92 Points, Jeb Dunnuck – The 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Rutherford Estate Vineyard (91% Cabernet and 9% Merlot) offers a more up-front, already complex, medium to full-bodied style that carries lots of spiced red and black fruits, dried herbs, loamy earth, and incense. It’s another impressive, outstanding, textured wine in this lineup I’d be happy to drink.

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