2017 Promontory Proprietary Red

Showing consistently, the 2017 Promontory has to be one of the greatest 2017s from Napa out there. Showing the full-bodied, elegant style of the vintage, it offers a beautiful perfume of ripe red and black currants, smoked tobacco, savory dried herbs, and scorched earth. It’s certainly accessible today, with ripe, integrated tannins, yet it has the balance and concentration to evolve for another two decades.

The 2017 Promontory is vibrant, focused and bristling with energy. Bright red-toned fruit, spice, crushed rocks and flowers convey energy, with floral notes that continue to open with aeration. This is an especially mid-weight, nervous vintage for Promontory, and yet all the elements are so well balanced. The 2017 is going to be a spectacular wine, in a number of years. This is one of its best showings.

100% Cabernet Sauvignon. Released six months earlier than usual, with the 2018 to follow next spring. The strategy works on two fronts: it covers for this much smaller vintage due to the fires around harvest in 2017, and they believe the tannin refinement in recent years means the wines are ready to drink sooner. Deep ruby in colour, the nose here is highly refined. Lightly sweet with notes of vanilla and cherry stones, it has a pure blackcurrant tone that brings real focus. This follows on the palate, which is already layered and complex. Intense without heaviness, this is a remarkable wine in such trying conditions as those faced in 2017. It is multi-faceted, having sweetness of fruit, ripeness of tannin, freshness of acidity and measured use of fine, savoury oak. This could well warrant a higher score with more time in bottle. (TP)