Black fruit, roasted coffee, game and vanilla aromas. Sumptuous, vivacious and spicy with juicy ripe fruit, grainy tannins. Long and moreish, seductive and delicious.

This is one of the most tannic Cabs Far Niente has produced in quite a while. It’s really not drinkable now, despite very complex flavors of blackberries, cherries, licorice, tobacco and plums, along with plenty of smoky new oak. Made with a few drops of Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc, which add perfume and flowers, it’s a wine that won’t come into its own for quite a while. Hold until 2013, at least, and it should provide interesting drinking for years after, in a proper cellar. ——S.H.(6/1/2010)—— 93