2007 BOND Quella

Good medium ruby. Very ripe, expressive scents of blueberry, blackberry, graphite and violet, plus hints of tobacco and mocha. A fat, savory wine with captivating sweetness and almost exotic liqueur-like ripeness to its black fruit flavors. Deep, rich and serious, with an element of salinity adding another dimension. Finishes with substantial dusty, building tannins, a slight warmth and impressive richness.

Good medium ruby. Very ripe, expressive scents of blueberry, blackberry, graphite and violet, plus hints of tobacco and mocha. A fat, savory wine with captivating sweetness and almost exotic liqueur-like ripeness to its black fruit flavors. Deep, rich and serious, with an element of salinity providing another dimension. Finishes with substantial dusty, building tannins, a slight warmth and impressive richness.

The 2007 Quella performed slightly better than I predicted last year. A magical combination of blueberry liqueur intermixed with crushed rock, spring flowers (violets?), earth, pen ink and burning ember leads to a full-bodied, majestically rich wine with a multilayered texture, silky tannins and a phenomenally long finish of over 50 seconds. This sensational 2007 should drink well for 25-30+ years. Bond is the extraordinary project of Harlan Estate’s proprietor, Bill Harlan. In essence, what he does along with his winemaker, Bob Levy, and his team, is to identify outstanding vineyard sites in specific viticultural regions of Napa Valley, sign the owners to long-term (20 years) leases, and produce essentially 100% Cabernet Sauvignon wines from these sites. As I have written in the past, all of these offerings represent world-class Cabernet Sauvignons from Napa meant to endure 30 or more years of cellaring should one have the patience to wait that long. There are five separate vineyard sites in the Bond portfolio. Melbury comes off steep slopes just north of Lake Hennessy, east of Rutherford. It is a seven-acre hillside vineyard planted in compressed clay and sedimentary soils. The Pluribus (which I have mistakenly referred to as E Pluribus in some past reviews) comes from a high elevation (over 1,000 feet) site on Spring Mountain on the west side of Napa Valley. The northern-most parcel in the Bond portfolio, it is a seven-acre vineyard planted in pure tufa volcanic bedrock. The most southernly situated vineyard is Vecina, which is the nearby neighbor of Harlan Estate. These are western hillsides of Napa Valley overlooking the Oakville Corridor to the north and Yountville to the south. It is an 11-acre parcel planted at an elevation of 200-330 feet. St. Eden is the only valley floor vineyard. It is composed of 11 acres just north of the Oakville Crossroad planted in gentle foothills. The Quella vineyard is a nine-acre site in the eastern foothills of St. Helena planted on an old alluvial riverbed of cobble and rocks intermixed with the white tufa soils of volcanic origin. All the 2007s have been bottled after receiving essentially the same time in barrel, usually in excess of two years (the same as the Harlan Estate cuvée). The 2008s were all tasted from barrel.