2012 Groth Vineyards & Winery Estate Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville 750 ml

Twenty-Seven Years Later:  Robert Parker’s First 100pt Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon

As was explained so eloquently in the book The Winemaker’s Dance, written by geologists Jonathan Swinchatt and David G. Howell, the secret to the blackberry decadence of Napa Valley’s greatest Cabernet Sauvignons resides in the geological makeup of the valley’s substrata. None of which was lost on Denis Groth, a senior Atari executive who purchased 120 acres on the Oakville Cross Road.  

Groth’s land grab paid immediate dividends.  Robert Parker shocked the wine world when he published a 100-point review about winemaker Nils Venge’s 1985 Groth “Reserve,” making it the first American wine ever to garner a perfect score from The Wine Advocate.

It would take another 27 years for Nature to deliver to Groth and his blue-chip neighbors a vintage that would not only equal the herculean 1985, but trump it. Chuck Wagner at Caymus was the first to call 2012 “a watershed year in Napa Valley,” one in which both quality and quantity were extraordinary. Groth and all of its blue chip Oakville Cross Road neighbors — Silver Oak, Opus One, Rudd Estate, and Plumpjack — had a field day, turning out a half dozen of the most extraordinary Cabernets of the vintage.  

Purple-black.  Plush aromatic mix of sweet black cherries, blackberry, and smoke, framed by dark spices and new wood cedar.  Intensely concentrated, round and pliant on the attack, with silken core of crushed black fruit and dark red fruit preserves, complicated by licorice, graphite, and tobacco, finishing with sneaky, supple tannins that argue gracefully for 10-20 years of cellar slumber.  Drink now for its primary fruit explosiveness, or do as we’re doing and don’t pop a cork before 2020.  

93 points from long time Wine Spectator critic, James Suckling.  A steal, particularly given its Oakville Cross Road roots, at $55/bottle.  Shipping included on 4.  240 bottles are up for grabs.