2018 Radix Dexter Cabernet Sauvignon-Cabernet Franc Scooteney Flats Vineyard Red Mountain 750 ml

Red Mountain is the hottest corner of Washington wine, a sun-drenched slope at the eastern edge of the Yakima Valley where summer days push past 90 degrees and nights drop below 50. Relentless wind keeps the vines small and the berries smaller, thick-skinned and concentrated.

It's one of the state's smallest appellations, and it turns out some of its most structured, age-worthy reds—wines built on tannin and dark fruit. For all that, it sits at the edge of the American Cabernet conversation, in the long shadow of Napa.

Radix works exclusively with that fruit. The name is Latin for root, and the idea runs through the place: founder Marco De Santis, a first-generation Italian-American whose family has made wine in Abruzzo for generations, traced his great-grandfather's 1904 arrival in Washington and came back to build a winery of his own. Every Radix bottling pairs grapes that share genetic roots.

The Dexter makes that literal. Cabernet Sauvignon is the offspring of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc, so here the Cabernet is grown beside its own parent at Scooteney Flats and co-fermented with it—around 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, the rest Cabernet Franc, the two in the same tank rather than blended after the fact. Fermented as one, they knit together: Cabernet Sauvignon's spine and dark-fruited weight, Cabernet Franc's lift of violet, herb, and bright red fruit.

Consulting winemaker Josh Maloney knows this ground. He ran the red program at Chateau Ste. Michelle and later at Milbrandt Vineyards before going out on his own, and Red Mountain Cabernet, with its famously severe tannins, is his home turf. A long cold soak, extended maceration, and patient time in mostly neutral French oak pull that structure into line, so the grip comes across as polished rather than punishing.

2018 handed him ideal material. A warm Washington summer ran into a cool, classic September that stretched ripening out and held the fruit's freshness; growers across Red Mountain called it a standout year for Cabernet, with tannins that came in ripe and firm. Eight years on, the wine has grown into itself—Damson plum and dark cherry, violet and lilac, tobacco and a cool thread of eucalyptus—with structure that still has road ahead.