DALLA VALLE Cabernet Sauvignon 2016

(Oakville, Napa Valley, CA) $200

Naoko Dalla Valle and her late husband Gustav founded Dalla Valle in 1986. The winery’s first winemaker was the esteemed Heidi Barrett. In 2017 Naoko and Gustav’s daughter Maya joined the company as its Director and began making the wines with help from consulting winemaker Andy Erickson. The cabernet vineyard, poised on a landslide ridge in the eastern hills of Oakville, makes wines that are rich and intense with saturated blackberry and cassis flavors, plus bitter cocoa notes and a minerally rockiness. Although the wines can be closed when young, the 2016 is open, fresh, luscious and long.