2017 Booker My Favorite Neighbor
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Tasting notes
Inky ruby. Heady, spice-accented blackberry, cherry liqueur, pipe tobacco, incense and candied rose on the powerfully scented nose. Chewy and energetic in the mouth, offering deeply concentrated red and blue fruit preserve flavors and candied licorice, roasted coffee and allspice notes that build in the glass. Finishes on a bitter cherry note, delivering solid thrust, well-knit tannins and superb, spice- and floral-tinged persistence.
Critic scores
Jeb Dunnuck
Josh Raynolds
More reviews and scores
The My Favorite Neighbor 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon contains 22% Syrah and 3% Petit Verdot and was aged in 75% new French oak. It has a medium to deep ruby color, and the nose offers aromas of fresh blackcurrants, blackcurrant bud, exotic spices, bitter chocolate and blue fruit hints with classic touches of pencil shavings, cedar and baking spice. Full-bodied, it explodes with ripe black fruits and has a firm, grainy frame and great freshness, finishing long and spicy. Give this another 3-5 years in bottle. 7,200 cases produced.
The 2017 My Favorite Neighbor is also terrific and I suspect would cost 2-3 times its going rate if it was from Napa Valley. It's also the more elegant, perfumed, red-fruited release compared to the darker fruited Harvey and Harriet release. Classy notes of black raspberries, spice box, white flowers, lead pencil shavings, and tobacco leaf all emerge from the glass of this medium to full-bodied red, which offers a seamless texture, fine tannins, and a great finish. It will be better with 2-3 years of bottle age and keep for over a decade. The My Favorite Neighbor releases are made by Eric Jensen and there are two cuvees, the Harvey and Harriet and the flagship My Favorite Neighbor. The Harvey and Harriet release is named after Jensen’s parents and includes small amounts of Syrah, Petit Verdot, Malbec. It’s made to be the more black-fruited, richer, more powerful wine in the lineup. The My Favorite Neighbor is more Cabernet Sauvignon dominated, and it’s the more elegant, red-fruited wine of the duo, yet it never lacks for fruit or richness. Both are brilliant wines, and as I wrote in one of the reviews, they would cost 2-3 times their going rate if they were from Napa Valley.