2019 Gallica Cabernet Sauvignon
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The 2019 Red Wine, mostly Cabernet Franc, is coming together beautifully following its bottling just prior to my first tasting, one year ago. It offers up copious blackberry jam, chocolate, espresso, mocha and licorice open first, followed by sweet floral notes that extend the sumptuous finish so effortlessly.
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James Suckling
Jeb Dunnuck
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The 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon, which includes 3% Cabernet Franc and is all from the Oakville Ranch Vineyard, is top notch stuff and certainly plays with the best in the vintage. Beautiful black fruits, crushed stone, spicy oak, and floral notes define the bouquet, and it’s medium to full-bodied, with ripe yet certainly present tannins and one heck of a great finish. This beautiful wine will evolve for 25-30 years if stored properly.
Gallica's 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Oakville Ranch Vineyard offers up impressively concentrated blueberry and cassis fruit, limned with notes of dark chocolate, loam and faint hints of sage and bay leaf. It's medium to full-bodied and rather modestly textured, with a slightly coarse feel on the finish. Perhaps I'm being overly critical, but I just don't see the same beauty in this vintage that prior reviewers have in preceding ones—it comes across as rather chunky and lacking a degree of elegance.
The 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon is shaping up be another jewel of a wine from Rosemary Cakebread. Ample and explosive, the Cabernet shows all of the natural richness of the vintage in spades. Whereas the 2018 is bright and somewhat reticent, the 2019 is very much an extrovert. I would give it a few years to soften and shed some baby fat. Crème de cassis, licorice and lavender add the closing shades of complexity.