2014 Leonetti Walla Walla Reserve
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Tasting notes
The 2014 Red Wine Reserve bursts from the glass with a mentholated freshness as dusty rose and musky black cherries form its perfumed bouquet. This is deeply textural and plush on the palate, with saline minerals and brisk acidity adding tension as pretty inner florals form toward the close. The 2014 finishes energetically, buzzing with residual tension, as sour cherries and licorice tones slowly fade. Aromatically, the 2014 is beginning to develop, but it still requires some patience to truly soften.
Critic scores
Average Score
Stephen Tanzer, Vinous
Eric Guido, Vinous
More reviews and scores
Bright, deep ruby-red. Less precise on the nose than the Cabernet Sauvignon but riper, offering scents of cassis, black cherry and brambly purple berries complicated by a note of licorice pastille. Wonderfully creamy in the middle, showing more obvious fruit than the Cabernet but with lovely framing energy. Finishes very strong and long, with fully ripe, suave, slowly mounting tannins saturating the entire palate. Figgins included a bit of young-vines fruit from his steep, high-density Serra Pedace planting on rocky soil at 1,450 feet at SeVein. On first taste, this wine impressed with its plushness but it quickly closed down in the glass. It should be long-lived. Figgins noted that some Cabernet Franc can make it into this blend in cool years, but not in 2014.
Even deeper colored, the 2014 Walla Walla Reserve checks in as a blend of 79% Cabernet Sauvignon, 13% Malbec, and 8% Petit Verdot. Its vibrant purple color is followed by sensational notes of crème de cassis, graphite, lead pencil shavings and hints of damp herbs. Rich, full-bodied, gorgeously concentrated, tannic and impeccably balanced, it's unquestionably one of the gems in this vintage. It needs to be forgotten for 4-5 years and will keep for two decades or more.