2019 Screaming Eagle The Flight

Leading off with the 2019 The Flight, which is 65% Merlot, 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 5% Cabernet Franc, this has a beautiful perfume of red cherries, raspberries, and flowers. Medium to full-bodied on the palate, it shows the finesse, elegance, and lively style favored at this estate today, with perfectly integrated tannins and both richness and freshness. I love its overall balance as well as length, and it will benefit from just a few years of bottle age and should have upwards of two decades of overall longevity.

The 2019 The Flight, the estate's Merlot-based wine, is dark, powerful and brooding in demeanor, almost shockingly so. The natural concentration of a year with low yields and small berries is very much in evidence. A rush of black cherry, plum, graphite, lavender and blue/purplish fruit builds as this virile, explosive wine shows off its arresting beauty. In a word: impressive.

Very deep purple-black, the 2014 Second Flight (composed of 57% Merlot and 43% Cabernet Sauvignon with no Cabernet Franc) is a little closed at this youthful stage, offering glimpses of blueberry compote, blackberry pie and cassis notions with touches of garrigue, bay leaves, black truffles, rose hips and underbrush plus a hint of wood smoke. Medium-bodied, the palate delivers wonderful freshness, with very firm, very finely grained tannins and layers of vibrant black fruits, finishing on a profound minerally note. With this vintage, we can see something of a stylistic departure, offering an expression of Merlot that is bright, refreshing, elegant and perfumed, and it is perhaps more similar to Screaming Eagle in terms of style than it has ever been. Beautiful!