This wine has deeply concentrated yet focused and spicy purple-fruit tones. It’s generously endowed with notes of tobacco, licorice, mineral and pepper. The highlights keep piling on through a finish that seems to run for several minutes. This bold wine is enjoyable now but should also cellar well through 2020.

A beautiful Bordeaux blend, the 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Artist Series checks in as a blend of 100% Cabernet, from a number of vineyards (mostly Woodward Canyon, Champoux and Spring Creek), that spent 21 months in 50% new French oak. It’s a classy, full-bodied, seamless and sexy 2012 that exhibits lots of black cherry, black raspberry, toasted spices, licorice and dried herbs. The most approachable and forward of the Bordeaux blends, it will still have two decades of longevity. - Jeb Dunnuck