Incorporating 10% Petit Verdot and 2% Merlot from a mix of sites in the Columbia Valley, the 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Père De Famille reveals a healthy ruby/purple hue to go with beautiful cassis fruits interwoven with notions of dried rose petals, violets, cedary spice, and chalky minerality. Medium to full-bodied, reasonably well concentrated, yet elegant and beautifully balanced, it opens up nicely with time in the glass and will benefit from 2-4 years of bottle age and keep for 20 years.

This is a wine for the ages. Aromas of thyme, the blackest of cherries, licorice, bay leaf and spice are followed by outright delicious, plump fruit flavors. There's a whole lot of primary fruit, with ample structure to hang it all on, along with plenty of depth and intensity. The finish is near endless. It flat-out impresses, with remarkable intensity. Best from 2028 to 2038. SEAN P. SULLIVAN

Dark fruits march with anise, crème de cassis and tobacco leaf with tar accents on this gorgeous nose. The palate is rich and marvelously viscous with a great veil of tension that runs through the core of cassis, mocha, tar, graphite and blackberry compote flavours. The seamless texture adds to the enjoyment.

Acting similarly to the 2015, the 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Père de Famille is dense and chewy and will still need additional time for the wine to tell its secrets. Dense, chewy and firm with a tannic edge, the full-bodied wine is seemingly closed down. The wine will no doubt be gorgeous with time, but its generous and lively nature will show better with more time in the cellar. Be patient; this one is a creeper, yet it will outlast the 2015 bottling. - Anthony Mueller

(94+ points) Bright red-ruby. Deep, precise scents of dark raspberry, licorice, bitter chocolate, menthol and violet. Much denser and riper on entry than the Clos de Betz, then penetrating and complex in the middle palate, delivering deep, intense red and darker berry flavors complicated by wild herbs, cocoa powder, minerals and menthol. Highly concentrated, energetic, deep and very long, with firm dusty tannins perfectly buffered by the wine's intensity of fruit. Showing some of the savory minerality of the 2017, this very suave wine is made for cellaring even if it's balanced from the start. But with limited easy sweetness, this solidly structured Cabernet Sauvignon is not quite as generous as the Heart of the Hill, at least in the early going. - By Stephen Tanzer on July 2020