2015 Kathryn Hall Cabernet Sauvignon

Very deep purple-black, the 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Kathryn Hall offers up exuberant black cherries, black berries and plum preserves notes with wafts of crushed blackcurrants, red roses, tilled black soil, ground pepper and cedar chest plus a touch of espresso. Full-bodied, concentrated and delivering layer upon layer of earth and spice-laced black fruits, it has a solid line of grainy tannins and plenty of freshness to support, with a very long finish.

The 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Kathryn Hall is another huge wine that offers just about everything you could want from Napa Valley, including incredible opulence paired with sensational purity and elegance. Blackberries, black cherries, blueberries, violets, spring flowers and white chocolate notes all flow to a full-bodied, deep, multi-dimensional effort that has sweet, yet present, tannin and a big finish. It's going to be up with the top handful of wines in the vintage. One of the eye-opening tastings while working on this report was the lineup from Kathryn Hall’s estate located in St. Helena. There’s a wealth of wines here, yet they all have deep, concentrated, pure profiles as well as singular characters. You could pretty much randomly select from this lineup and be guaranteed to have a brilliant wine. Hats off to winemaker Steve Leveque. All the 2016s, and the majority of the 2015s, were tasted as barrel samples.

The 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Kathryn Hall is unusually dark and intense in this vintage. The Kathryn Hall typically shows more of red-fruit profile, but in 2015, the warmth of the vintage produced an unusually dark, flamboyant wine, even by Hall standards. Crème de cassis, menthol, licorice and lavender meld into the deep, unctuous finish. The tannins are a bit raw today, but the wine still has plenty of time yet in barrel to sort itself out.