The 2004 Melbury comes from Pritchard Hill and is aged 22 months in 100% new French oak. (About 600-700 cases of each of these wines are produced.) The 2004 Melbury is showing even better than it was early on. It is very open-knit for a Bond wine at age ten and that’s a good thing, since we all want to drink these wines in our lifetime. This comes across as a Napa version of the famed Pauillac Pontet-Canet, with terrific licorice, cedarwood, blackberry, crème de cassis, toast, spice box and lead pencil notes in the aromatics and flavors of this drinkable, full-bodied, opulent wine that is strutting its stuff splendidly. It should drink well for another 15 or more years given its sensational richness and overall equilibrium. A brilliant project of Harlan Estates’ proprietor, Bill Harlan, these single-vineyard wines have been everything a Cabernet connoisseur could ever hope for since they were first released. Amazingly, these wines taste better with age than they did young, which is exactly what Harlan and his winemaking team of Bob Levy and consulting enologist Michel Rolland are trying to prove.

Fresh black cherry, currant and plum aromas are pure and riveting. Firm, rich and polished, with hints of nutmeg, rose petal and wild berry that are deep and complex. Intense, focused and concentrated, this is beautifully balanced, deep and persistent, with ripe, integrated tannins. Drink now through 2018. 573 cases made.

A dark, rich wine, this opens with ripe, sweet aromas of fresh blackberries, cedar, cigar box, pencil lead and cinnamon. Brings to mind a classified Pauillac, rather hard and tannic now, but sweetly ripe and refined, and very rich in mulberries, cherries, licorice and mocha. A magnificent young wine. Best now, with decanting, through 2012, at least.——S.H.(12/1/2007)—— 94