into neck

91 points John Gilman

The wine takes a good fifteen or twenty minutes to flesh out on the palate after opening, as the remaining tannins are a bit bare-boned out of the blocks, but the fruit comes up nicely and this wine gives a lovely hour to ninety minute window of fine drinking, before it again starts to get a bit sinewy on the palate. During its prime period, the wine offers up a really lovely nose of red and black cherries, a bit of plum, Rutherford dust spice tones, sweet cigar wrapper and gentle notes of toasted coconut from its American oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied and really quite nicely delineated, with a good core, still a bit of tannin and fine freshness and purity on the long and focused finish. This starts out as a nice 87 wine and then climbs up to 91 when all of the constituent components are open and in place, stays there for an hour or so, and then begins to gently fade a bit and get four-square. (1/2014)