2016 Rive Droite Paradise Hills Vineyard

This is a spectacular set of 2016s and 2017s from Claude and Katherine Blankiet. Winemaker Graeme MacDonald has gotten the best out of both vintages. Since taking over following the passing of Denis Malbec, MacDonald has moved towards gentler extractions. The wines might get as much as 40-50 days on the skins, but with fewer pumpovers than in the past. That, along with other refinements, such as bottling a bit earlier, have helped give the Blankiet wines an extra degree of nuance and precision that is very obvious. Claude Blankiet describes 2017 as a year with three prolonged heat spikes, each of which lasted ten days as opposed to the more typical three or so. Here, MacDonald chose to shorten time on the skins in order to avoid overextracting the wines. Even in the early going, the 2017s are quite promising at Blankiet, especially for the Cabernet Sauvignon. Lastly, as good as the top wines are, readers should not overlook the Prince of Hearts, one of the very finest values in all of Napa Valley.

I was blown away by the wines I tasted with Claude and Katherine Blankiet, and their new winemaker, Graeme MacDonald. The late Denis Malbec, along with his wife, May-Britt, did so much to dial back some of the excesses of the estate's earlier wines. In just his first vintage, MacDonald has taken over a very delicate situation and put his personal stamp on the wines. One of MacDonald's first decisions was to bottle the 2015s, which were made by Malbec, about two months earlier than had been the norm previously. The shorter amount of time in barrel seems to give these wines quite a bit more fruit intensity and fewer oak influences. The 2016s, MacDonald's first vintage from start to finish, are superb and point to a bright future. MacDonald opted for a more reductive approach to winemaking, which means in essence exposing the wines to less air during vinification and aging. Ultimately, though, the credit for these wines lies with the Blankiets. They hired a young, emerging winemaker to take over from a veteran, and have let him have full reign in the vineyards and cellar. Very few owners are willing to take that level of risk, but as the saying goes "no guts, no glory." There is plenty of both guts and glory in these magnificent, statuesque wines from Blankiet.