2015 TOR Wines Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville Hillside Napa Valley 750 ml

Tasting this wine with Tor, it sits comfortably in the league of Napa’s best Cabernets. It is a profound, majestically structured and sveltely textured Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon with inky black color, an array of black fruits, exotic spices, licorice, with clove, dark chocolate, and fine French oak. The palate is refined with a dense core balanced by fresh acidity, granitic minerality and rich, fine tannins. It boasts excellent length with a black fruit and bramble finish.

Tierra Rioja Vineyard, in the foothills of the western side of Oakville is a small four-acre jewell. Encircled by Screaming Eagle, Maya and Rudd, this is one of the prime places in the Napa Valley to grow classically structured, compellingly perfumed Cabernet Sauvignon.  As its name suggests, it is peppered with big red rocks, and this wine is from the terraced hillsides directly beneath Dalla Valle. As Tor says, “You might expect the wines to be massive, but they are very perfumed, dark, and complex — more like Screaming Eagle.”

Made in tiny quantity, this wine was fermented in a single small tank. The fruit is so tiny-berried with such ripe skins that winemaker Jeff Ames kept it on skins for a full month, as it picked up depth and richness. Just 12 Taransaud and Darnajou French oak barrels were selected to age the final blend.

We're in full agreement with Robert Parker’s former California reviewer, Jeb Dunnuck, and his 98-point review of this wine: “The 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville Hillside is a tour de force! Coming from a site just below Dalla Valle and blended with 5% Cabernet Franc, its deep purple color is followed by a deep, sensational bouquet of blackcurrants, black cherries, scorched earth, flowers, and loads of rock minerality. Possessing full-bodied richness, impeccable balance, and plenty of depth, it’s the purity, nuance, and elegance that set this beauty apart. With building tannin, integrated acidity and big finish, give it 4-5 years of bottle age and it’s going to cruise in the cellar for 20+ years.”

This is an outstanding example of why the Oakville Hillsides are home to many of Napa’s greatest Cabernets.