2010 BOND Matriarch

The 2010 Matriarch is quite beautiful in this vintage. Supple and juicy at first, the 2010 has plenty of underlying structure. Rose petals, violets, new leather and a hint of orange peel appear on an exotic, perfumed finish laced with veins if dark red and blue fruits.

The medium-bodied 2010 Matriarch displays lots of blueberry and blackcurrant fruit intermixed with hints of white chocolate, espresso, spice and background oak. Opulent and lush with sweet, well-integrated tannins, this 2010 can be drunk now and over the next 10-15 years. To quickly summarize this project that has been remarkably successful since the debut vintage, Bond is the project of the visionary Bill Harlan, the proprietor of Harlan Estate. Along with winemaker Bob Levy and consulting enologist Michel Rolland, he continues to sign 20-year leases on highly regarded vineyards planted with 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from which he offers consumers world-class Cabernet Sauvignons that showcase different Napa microclimates/terroirs. In short, there are five separate vineyard sites in the Bond portfolio. The Melbury comes from a seven-acre parcel (sedimentary and clay soils) on steep slopes in the Pritchard Hill area near Lake Hennessey, east of Rutherford. The northern most parcel, the Pluribus comes from a high elevation (1,000 feet) site on Spring Mountain. It, too, is a seven-acre parcel planted in the white volcanic bedrock called tufa. The most southerly situated vineyard is Vecina (11 acres planted at 200- to 330 foot elevation), which is a neighbor of Harlan Estate in the Oakville Corridor, on the western hillsides of Napa. St. Eden, a valley floor vineyard, is composed of 11 acres on gentle foothills just north of the Oakville Crossroads. The Quella Vineyard is a nine-acre site in the eastern foothills of St. Helena with an interesting terroir of alluvial pebbles and small rocks of what is believed to be an old riverbed. White tufa can be found as well. Part of the objective is to vinify these wines in identical manners so that as they age their microclimate/terroir characters become more pronounced. The barrels that are deemed not worthy enough to go into the individual single-vineyard wines are blended into the Matriarch cuvée.

Good deep ruby. Sappy aromas of black raspberry, mocha, coffee and licorice, plus a suggestion of roasted oak. Sweet, fine-grained and quite ripe, with expressive flavors of currant, tobacco and vanillin oak. A tad less sweet on the finish than the Maiden wine from Harlan.