2014 Cabernet Sauvignon Gravel Series Scholar's Gate

My tasting at Round Pond was one of the highlights of my fall trip through Napa Valley, not just because of the wines, but more importantly because of what appears to be an enormous amount of potential that continues to be realized by owners Ryan and Miles MacDonnell. Newly arrived winemaker JJ Dowell and consultant Thomas Brown make a formidable team. They also have access to Round Pond's elite sites on the home ranch in Rutherford along with M Bar Ranch in Oakville. All of these vineyards naturally yield wines of substance and power. Round Pond does best when those attributes are complemented by a measure of finesse and structure, rather than amplified in the pursuit of unctuousness and concentration, a choice that has at times erased many of the soil signatures in the wines. In this broad range the Reserve Cabernet delivers the greatest amount of value.

Round Pond has really come on in the last few years and established themselves as a producer of serious Napa Valley Cabernets. For years, Round Pond has sold fruit to a number of wineries, while the focus and ambition to make first-rate estate wines is more recent. Perhaps because of that, some things are still in evolution. Round Pond makes a number of wines that draw from various parts of the property plus two single block Cabernets from the Rutherford estate and a third single-vineyard wine from their M-Bar Ranch in Oakville that together form the Gravel Series wines. In my view, the simpler wines at Round Pond are the best of the bunch. My distinct impression of the three flagship wines is that they spend too much time in oak and are being made in a style that is overly forced and concentrated for what these sites seem to want to produce more naturally. In fact, multiple tastings of those wines strongly suggest the wines lose personality rather than gain complexity over their relatively long aging times in oak. Those three wines could and should be world class. Today, they fall a bit short of that level. Consumers are better off focusing on the Estate and Reserve bottlings, both of which deliver superb quality for the money.