March 23, 2018

BARNETT VINEYARDS "Rattlesnake" Cabernet Sauvignon 2015

(Spring Mountain, Napa Valley) $190

Is it too early to be thinking about Father’s Day? Because if it isn’t, this would be a phenomenal gift. Hemingway would have liked this wine—a wine stripped bare to its muscle. It’s made at the 2000-foot top of Spring Mountain on a 35 degree slope of solid rock that had to be jack hammered into (a bit of) submission. “Masculine” only begins to describe it. And yet for all the magnificent structure here, there’s also a hint of juiciness and minerality which will emerge more fully as the wine ages. This part of Spring Mountain is notorious for its rattlesnakes. Who knew they had a fine sense of terroir?

95 points KM

Available at Barnett Vineyards

Grange is most closely associated with:

A. Rural wineries working with indigenous grapes

B. Cabernet Sauvignon

C. Syrah

D. Irrigation

For three quarters of a century, the most iconic—and expensive—Australian Shiraz has been Grange, made by the powerful wine firm Penfolds. (Shiraz is the name commonly used in Australia for the grape Syrah). Grange was first made in 1951 by Penfolds’s then winemaker, Max Schubert, who, after a tasting trip to Bordeaux, returned to Australia with an experiment in mind: Could he make a wine similar in structure, complexity, and ageability to a top Bordeaux—but using Shiraz (rather than Cabernet) grapes, and using American oak rather than French oak (as in Bordeaux)? Schubert’s bosses were unconvinced, and in fact told him to abandon the project. He carried on anyway. Today Grange is not only one of the country’s most famous wines; it also has one of the longest track records when it comes to aging. Some wines from the 1950s made by Max Schubert are still in amazing condition.

Grapegate

Someone is stealing the great grapes of Burgundy, according to the Burgundy wine bureau (BIVB). As reported in Decanter, there have now been four separate reports of thefts of grapes across the region. A possible… Continue reading

BARNETT VINEYARDS "Rattlesnake" Cabernet Sauvignon 2015

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