Lokoya, Cabernet Sauvignon, Mt. Veeder 2016

Unfortunately, there won’t be a 2017 due to the fires, but the perfect 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon Mt. Veeder should certain tide you over. This literally off-the-charts effort is a good as Cabernet Sauvignon gets, offering complex blueberry and blackberry fruits, violets, bay leaf, and forest floor aromas and flavors. It’s a big, structured mountain Cabernet, yet it has a seamless texture, incredible elegance paired with full-bodied power, building tannins, and a great, great finish. Hide bottles for 4-5 years and it will keep for 3+ decades. Good luck keeping your hands off it, though. Anticipated maturity: 2023-2051

The 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon Mount Veeder is composed of 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. Deep garnet-purple colored, it leaps from the glass with gregarious crème de cassis, wild blueberries and black raspberries with nuances of black tea, violets, aniseed, truffles and new leather plus wafts of charcuterie and chargrill. Full-bodied, very firm and very tightly wound at this youthful stage, the palate is absolutely packed with black fruit and earthy layers, finishing with epic persistence. 1,100 cases produced.

Huge swaths of tannin envelop the 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon (Mt. Veeder). Iron, smoke, blood orange, cedar and tobacco add aromatic nuance to this sinewy, nuanced mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. The 2016 is a bit stern next to the other Lokoya Cabernets in the early going, but it has plenty of depth and resonance in its fruit waiting to emerge over time.