2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Lotus Vineyards

(15.1% alcohal, from a west/southwest-facing hillside vineyard at an altitude of 1,200 feet on rocky soil, picked 6 to 10 days later than Helms): Black ruby. Hugely rich nose offers scents of black fruits, violet, licorice, mocha and bitter chocolate. Massively concentrated, tactile and deep but distinctly liqueur-like and rather unrefined, showing a strong earthy, rocky, smoky minerality. Finishes with an outsized, slightly rough tannic structure, although the tannins showed signs of softening as the wine opened in the glass Still, this is a bit tarry, chocolatey and porty for my taste even if it's carrying sound acidity. A chunkier style than the Helms, and a wine that new winemaker Chris Cooney notes needs more time in bottle to integrate. Incidentally, these two wines were aged in 100% new oak, but today the percentage is a bit less. I scored this wine higher when I first tasted it from bottle in 2010, even though I noted that it was hugely tannic and utterly primary, but this particular bottle struck me as rather extreme.

Bright ruby-red. Crushed blueberry, licorice and graphite on the reticent nose. Extremely primary and deep, with a medicinal cast to the powerful but very backward flavors of crushed black fruits and minerals. There's little in the way of easy sweetness here, and the seriously tannic finish is tough going today. But this hugely rich if youthfully imploded wine gained dramatically in texture and fruit over the 48 hours I followed it and should evolve spectacularly in the cellar.

Utterly perfect is the 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Lotus Vineyard. This 100% Cabernet Sauvignon was aged in 100% new French oak. Although limited in availability (220 cases produced), it is a wine of awesome intensity boasting an opaque purple color in addition to a brilliant floral-scented bouquet displaying aromas of cassis, black raspberries, black fruit, and forest floor. Multilayered with terrific intensity as well as a long, nearly 60-second finish, this flawlessly assembled wine is a brilliant example of Cabernet Sauvignon from the St. Helena hillsides. Give it 2-5 years of cellaring and drink it over the following 25 years. Bravo! One can't say enough about what proprietor Hi Sang Lee and his son, both from Seoul, Korea, have accomplished at what used to be called the Livingston-Moffett Estate in Rutherford. They have dramatically transformed that estate into their Helms Vineyard, to which they have added the Lotus Vineyard from the St. Helena hillsides and the Hershey Vineyard on Howell Mountain. The consulting winemaker is Philippe Melka, and as the following notes attest, their 2007s are off the charts. Moreover, the 2008s look strong, although there is no Howell Mountain Cabernet since that vineyard was completely wiped out because of spring frosts.