Decanter’s best Clos du Val ever:
The dry yet measured 2021 season in the Napa Valley has produced some splendid wines, and everyone who tasted this wine was very excited both about the joy of its sensual profile as well as about its ageing potential – though it’s far from forbidding at present. It’s a saturated black red in colour, with melting, yielding black-fruit aromas on the nose (bramble, damson, elderberry). There are flowers, and a box- or privet-like freshness generating lift for those fruits. On the palate, the wine is ample and mouthfilling, packed with pure, fresh, floral fruits -- yet suggesting a little exotic spice, too. The diagnostically soft yet ample Napa tannins are much in evidence, both lending the wine seriousness and food-friendliness yet also ensuring that it will endure well in time. That freshness (early evening breezes cooling the Stag’s Leap Palisades, perhaps?), so intrinsic to this wine, will surely last well, too, and perhaps even carry the wine’s beguiling floral perfumes with it through time.
Same for the Tasting Panel:
Celebrating 50 years of Clos du Val's history on the Hirondelle Estate in the Stags Leap District. proprietor Olav Goelet named this wine for his grandmother, who, in his words, "was always planning for the future." A blend of 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Cabernet Franc, 10% Malbec, 7% Merlot, and 5% Petit Verdot, it's absolutely luminous. The astonishing mouthfeel is silky and dramatic, revealing fresh boysenberry, vanilla, cassis, crème fraîche, and black-tea tannins as a garden of peony, hibiscus, sweet tobacco, Italian herbs, and dried rose sprouts on the nose and palate. In its youthful glory, Yettalil shows stature and elegance with a wisp of chalky minerality on the graceful finish.
Dunnuck, too:
The 2021 Yettalil is a tiny production flagship cuvee (it's only made in top vintages) that's based on 66% Cabernet Sauvignon, 12% Cabernet Franc, 10% Malbec, 7% Merlot, and 5% Petit Verdot that was brought up in 40% new French oak. It's another brilliant 2021 displaying a vibrant ruby/purple hue as well as stunning aromatics of black raspberries, blackcurrants, spring flowers, lead pencil, and hints of damp earth, and you'd be excused if you called this a top Pauillac in a blind tasting. It has the vintage's focused, concentrated, structured style on the palate and is medium to full-bodied, with building yet ripe, polished tannins and a gorgeous finish. It's not for the instant gratification crowd and needs a solid 4-6 years of bottle age, but it's going to be a 30+-year wine.
