2018 Eisele Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley

WA99 The very deep, purple-black colored 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon is made from 100% Cabernet Sauvignon. It takes a fair amount of swirling to unlock an incredibly intense nose of dark chocolate, warm cassis, baked plums and Morello cherries plus touches of red roses, violets, pencil shavings, cinnamon stick and dusty soil with a hint of iron ore. The full-bodied palate is so exquisitely elegant, charged with electric black and red fruits and a firm frame of super-ripe, grainy tannins and bold freshness, finishing very long and very perfumed. This is pure energy in a glass!
“2018 was nice for us—it was an easy vintage,” Eisele Vineyard’s winemaker Helene Mingot told me last year. “The conditions for ripening were ideal. It was a nice, cool summer. We didn’t have too much problem with vigor. Our vines are 25 years old, so our yields remained 2.5 to three tons per acre. It was a long harvest because we could harvest when we wanted. This year was the highest color we ever recorded!” 
JS99 Blackberry, dried-blueberry, bitter-chocolate and some volcanic-ash and burnt-orange aromas. Crushed stone and subtle vanilla notes, too. It’s full-bodied with firm, chewy tannins framing a deep core of dark fruit. Dense, muscular and firmly structured. So long. Goes on for minutes. Elegance with power. Really love the beautiful refinement and integrity to this. Captures the essence of the vintage. Try from 2025.
Estate Notes: The 2018 Eisele Vineyard Cabernet is one of the finest and most terroir-transparent vintages that our team had the joy to produce. Very subtle and elegant, the wine unveils a nose of intense black currants, blackberries and Burlat cherry with a scent of roses, crushed rocks, tobacco box and cocoa bean. The mouthfeel is ample and silky, exploding with layers of black and red fruits, spicy cinnamon, vanilla and earthy notes. The personality of the Eisele Vineyard terroir is unmistakable in this vintage: a precisely delineated structure, racy tannins and an incredibly refined texture, combined with great freshness from floral and mineral notes ending in a very long, velvety finish. Eisele Vineyard parcels bordering Simmons Creek. Vine Age: 26 years on average. 100% Cabernet Sauvignon.Ageing: 20 months in 100% new oak.