2010 Bond Vecina Proprietary Red Wine

(99 Points)

Another wine flirting with perfection is the 2010 Vecina, the nearby neighbor of Harlan Estate on the western hills overlooking the Oakville Corridor, and further south, Yountville. A Graves-like effort, it displays notes of burning embers, scorched earth, creme de cassis, and charcoal. Primordial, dense, rich, full-bodied, masculine and backward, this is another example of a wine built for half a century of cellaring. Forget it for 7-10 years and watch the pleasure unfold thereafter.

To quickly summarize this project that has been remarkably successful since the debut vintage, Bond is the project of the visionary Bill Harlan, the proprietor of Harlan Estate. Along with winemaker Bob Levy and consulting oenologist Michel Rolland, he continues to sign twenty-year leases on highly regarded vineyards planted with 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from which he offers consumers world-class Cabernet Sauvignons that showcase different Napa micro-climates/terroirs. In short, there are five separate vineyard sites in the Bond portfolio. The Melbury comes from a 7-acre parcel (sedimentary and clay soils) on steep slopes in the Pritchard Hill area near Lake Hennessey, east of Rutherford. The northern most parcel, the Pluribus comes from a high elevation (1,000 feet) site on Spring Mountain. It, too, is a 7-acre parcel planted in the white volcanic bedrock called tufa. The most southerly situated vineyard is Vecina (11 acres planted at 200-330 foot elevation), which is a neighbor of Harlan Estate in the Oakville Corridor, on the western hillsides of Napa. St. Eden, a valley floor vineyard, is composed of 11 acres on gentle foothills just north of the Oakville Crossroads. The Quella Vineyard is a 9-acre site in the eastern foothills of St. Helena with an interesting terroir of alluvial pebbles and small rocks of what is believed to be an old riverbed. White tufa can be found as well. Part of the objective is to vinify these wines in identical manners so that as they age their micro-climate / terroir characters become more pronounced. The barrels that are deemed not worthy enough to go into the individual single vineyard wines are blended into the Matriarch cuvee.  Wine Advocate #209, Oct 2013