2018 Scattered Peaks "Morisoli Vineyard" Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon

From a well-known valley-floor site and winemaker Joel Aiken, the 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Morisoli Vineyard offers up scents of mint, dusty earth, cassis and black cherries. It's full-bodied and concentrated, rich, heavy on the palate, finishing long, velvety and tannic. Give it a few years in the cellar to soften. (JC)

A monumental wine in so many ways. Most importantly this tiny production wine comes from one of the most historic and significant vineyards in all of Rutherford. Morisoli Vineyard on the west Rutherford bench was first planted to gapes in 1880s. The Morisoli family have owned and farmed it for five generations since 1902. The vineyard sits right next-door to Inglenook and is also surrounded by renowned vineyards such as Bella Oaks and Staglin Estate. It sits in the perfect position on the bench with an alluvial fan of deep gravel combined with that famous red Rutherford Dust. This wine is also made entirely from Clone 7 of Cabernet Sauvignon. This heritage clone first brought to the USA from Bordeaux in 1893 was the original selection used by Georges de Latour when he founded Beaulieu Vineyards (just a stones throw from Morisoli) in 1903. This clone is an integral part of why Rutherford Cabernet has become so renowned world wide. Finally, tying all this together is Scattered Peaks' winemaker Joel Aiken. It's probably fair to say there are few people alive that know more about crafting Rutherford Cab than Joel. He served as Head Winemaker at BV for 25 years after working directly with the legendary André Tchelistcheff. He has worked with Morisoli fruit for many decades and now makes the Morisoli family's own estate produced wines that launched in 2018. So it's safe to say he has access to some of the very best blocks at this iconic site. The 2018 is statuesque, deep and brooding, packed with dusty cassis, plum, leather, cedar, cigar box and briar patch. There's plenty of deep, saturated fruit, but I also love the savory, dusty earth and tobacco leaf elements that this wine a embraces, too. It has a real sense of history and while the fruit intensity and ripeness are certainly a few notches above the monumental wines from this area made in the 1960s and 70s that helped cement Napa's reputation on the world stage, you can still feel that this is a wine rooted in a place, the soils and unique expression of this singular terroir are what inform its flavors and textures more so than any winemaking trickery. When the raw ingredients are of this quality the winemaker's job is simply to capture them in the bottle, something that Joel has done perfectly here. Drinking very nicely now, but will also improve for 8-10 more years and likely drink well for 20+ years.