Bella Oaks, Napa Valley, 2022
The 2022 Bella Oaks opens with a striking bouquet of sweet cassis, boysenberries, cedar, sandalwood, tobacco and lots of lovely floral elements. This is so expressive and beguiling, revealing lots of detail immediately, yet one senses there’s still much more to come. The palate is quite demonstrative, with waves of luxuriant, ripe, engaging fruit; there’s superb purity and texture, unctuous yet still light on its feet, coursing with energy. Harmonious and balanced with lots of mineral and floral complexity, dark, velvety fruit, sweet cherries and suggestions of liquorice and exotic spices. The final assemblage is 97% Cabernet Sauvignon, 2% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petit Verdot all co-fermented.
critic reviews
Despite GM Shae Kinsman's assertion that "it's not a black-fruit expression that comes out of this vineyard," the Bella Oaks 2022 Proprietary Red Wine offers up what I find to be generous amounts of black cherries and cassis, alongside a faint herbal note. A blend of 97% Cabernet Sauvignon, 2% Cabernet Franc and 1% Petit Verdot—the blenders come from Ecotone for now, while waiting for recent plantings at Bella Oaks to come online—it's a full-bodied wine, rich and somewhere between velvety and silky, with a long, elegant finish. It shows great intensity and length, with no trace of raisining, although I would call it more dark-fruited than red.