The 2018 Judge possesses a perfume of cured meats, iron, mincemeat pie, red licorice, and Aztec chocolate.  Vibrant and delicious flavors of Luxardo cherries and cinnamon tinged red currents lay out on the palate in a precise and balanced fashion.  Savory notes of wild boar sausage co-mingle with cumin spice and the extract, alcohol, and acid all in a harmonious balance.  Young and fresh, this beauty has a long, delicious life ahead of it.

Elegant and refined, this ethereal wine’s rich bouquet of blackberries, black cherry, and black currants, leap from the glass.  Fresh mulberry flavors dominate the palate and are tinged with notes of liquid minerals, nori wrapper, and bay laurel.  Three years in bottle have given the wine a long and seductive seamless finish framed by melting tannins and precise acids. This Cabernet reminds me of the timeless wines crafted by Lee Stewart at Chateau Souverain in the 1960’s and early 70’s.

There are few wines worthy of deification, but the 2018 Meleagris might be among the rare that do.  It boasts a saturated inky-purple color and after 3 years in bottle everything has come together seamlessly.  A striking perfume of blackberry preserves, wild blueberries, and dark cherry all tinged with turmeric, cardamon, Sichuan pepper, iron, and a rocky minerality.  Elegant yet deep, graceful yet authoritatively flavorful, this complex young wine will delight the cerebral drinker and seduce the hedonistic tippler for decades to come.