Tasting Note                          

91    1995 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars Napa Valley CS 2/19/05 ($27)

Color: Deep garnet with no clearing. Looks very solid. (3.5) Bouquet: Blackberries, violets and tannin. Elegantly restrained, almost to the point of boredom, but big. Also oatmeal with a touch of alcohol, it is 13.9%. (3.0) Body: A heavyweight with Napa density, but Stag’s Leap elegance, with very solid, yet smooth tannins and good fruit. The fruit could be sweeter to counter the tannin and Napa soil, but this is somewhat typical of the vintage. (3.0) Flavor: Rich and mouth-coating with blackberry and cassis fruit, and some tarry Napa soil with dry tannin. (3.0) Finish: Parallels the flavor, but has a tannic, green olive complexity that is reminiscent of a Graves. Not elegant or ripe, but distinctive. (3.0)
Overall: This is the 6th bottle of this I’ve had. The first going back to its infancy, which I had in ’97 at the winery. It’s interesting how wines in their early youth have flavors that reemerge in their mature years after being submerged in their developmental years, in this case the tannin-driven dense fruit with Napa terroir. This wine may never lose its tannic rough edges, but it will remain a solid example of a serious Napa Valley Cab for the next few years at least. I doubt it will improve much, but stranger things have happened. (15.5)