2013 Frog's Leap Winery Estate Grown Cabernet Sauvignon Rutherford 750 ml

Shoulder to Shoulder with Caymus, Round Pond, and Staglin

We met John Williams at a Locust Street eatery in Philadelphia in 1982. We already knew quite a bit about the young winemaker who had helped craft one of the most talked-about wines in Napa Valley history, the 1973 Stag’s Leap Cabernet Sauvignon, a bottle that outpointed Bordeaux’s First Growths at the famous Judgment of Paris tasting of 1976.

Over dinner at a restaurant fittingly named “The Frog,” John told of his first winemaking internship at Taylor Wine Company while attending Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. He spoke of the 5-day Greyhound bus trip after graduation that eventually landed him in Napa Valley, where he’d meet the brilliant Larry Turley, and how Turley made the introduction to Warren Winiarski at Stag’s Leap.

It would take three more years for Williams to give up his day job as winemaker at Spring Mountain Winery, and 13 more to finally take the real plunge, with the help of Chuck Carpy, purchasing the Red Barn, vineyards, and orchards from Freemark Abbey. But even as Frog’s Leap took off beyond John’s wildest imagination, he had not yet bottled the wine he’d always wanted to make.

Finally, in 2012, Williams released his first estate-grown and -bottled Cabernet Sauvignon, drawn off this historic planting in the heart of Rutherford. The following year, in what Robert Parker has suggested is the finest vintage in 37 years in Napa Valley, John Williams crafted a second estate-grown masterpiece that not only blew our socks off, but those of the cellarmaster at The French Laundry as well.

The 2013 Frog’s Leap Estate Grown Cabernet Sauvignon Rutherford is purple-black in hue. Gorgeous, mouthwatering aromas of black cherry, black raspberry, smoke, and black chocolate. Rich, mineral, flashy, and polished on the attack, filled with a copious mix of blackberry and black cherry preserves. This is a wine of both power and elegance, finishing with firm acid backbone and dusty tannin “cut.” Drink now-2035.

93 points from Antonio Galloni. $95/half-bottle at “The Laundry.” $49 for a full this morning. You make the call.