2015 Daou Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve

This wine is a blend of around 80% Cabernet Sauvignon with Petit Verdot, Merlot and Cabernet Franc making up the other 20%. Deep garnet-purple colored, the 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve offers ripe cassis, blackberry preserves, dried herbs, incense and dusty earth notions with a hint of smoked meat. The medium to full-bodied palate reveals a firm, fine-grained backbone with layered, relatively elegant fruit expression and a long and earthy finish.

Made with more and more estate fruit (this will move to 100% estate in the next few years), the 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve offers more black and blue fruits, with lots of graphite/pencil lead, licorice and crushed rocks aromatics. It's a big, rich, structured Cabernet that needs another 2-3 years of bottle age. This vintage is 80% Cabernet Sauvignon, 11% Petit Verdot and the balance Merlot and Cabernet Franc, which all sees 20 months in 50% new French oak. This estate was created in 2010 by brothers Daniel and Georges Daou, and it lies high up off Adelaida Road. Along with l’Aventure and Booker Vineyards, this estate is unquestionably leading the charge with regards to Bordeaux varieties in Paso Robles.

Lurid purple. Spice- and mineral-accented boysenberry and cherry-vanilla scents are complicated by suggestions of candied lavender, licorice and clove. Vibrant and expansive on the palate, offering appealingly sweet, oak-tinged black and blue fruit compote flavors that deepen and spread out slowly across the midpalate. Concentrated yet energetic and precise; a hint of smokiness builds on the back half. Youthfully chewy tannins lend shape and grip to the very long, floral-tinged finish, which leaves behind sappy dark fruit, vanilla and licorice pastille notes.