2013 Matriarch

This is a dazzling set of wines from BOND and the team headed by Cory Empting. The 2014s continue to develop positively. I remember tasting those wines from barrel, before they were racked and being impressed by the energy of the wines. Today, the 2014s have all of that energy, plus striking finesse. The malos were quite long in 2014, but today, the wines are very complete. The 2013s are just as impressive, or more, than they were from barrel. Readers will find plenty of vintage 2013 magic in these exceptionally beautiful, vivid Napa Valley Cabernets.

Two thousand thirteen is shaping up to be a fabulous vintage at BOND, where Bill Harlan offers five distinct essays on Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon as expressed in a collection of some of the best sites in the region. The 2012s are solid, but this is not a super-exciting vintage for Napa Valley, even at BOND. The biggest reason for that is that the personalities of the sites are not as marked as they usually are, something that is a characteristic of the vintage as a whole. As good as the wines are - and they are often fabulous - BOND is also the Harlan project that is at the greatest risk of getting lost in the shuffle. Harlan Estate is of course firmly entrenched as one of California's great wines. Promontory, another deeply site-specific wine, will soon make a case for inclusion among the valley's elite wines. But BOND, with its collection of five single-vineyard Cabernets, has a much less clearly defined identity. I am not sure why that is.