Aromas and flavors of forest floor, pine needles and underbrush, along with mulberry, blackberry and blackcurrant notes jump from the glass of the inky purple 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon Sycamore. This Rutherford site is one mile south of Bosché Vineyard. The wine is 87% Cabernet Sauvignon and the rest Merlot and Cabernet Franc, treated identically to the Bosché and aged 24 months in French oak. The most youthful of all three wines, it is dense purple in color and exhibits licorice, charcoal, graphite, and a foresty, autumnal vegetation note. Deep boysenberry fruit is also detected in this rich, full-bodied, structured, dense and powerful Cabernet Sauvignon. Give it another several years of cellaring and drink it over the following two decades. Production levels on these wines range from just over 11,000 cases of their Napa Cabernet Sauvignon to approximately 1,900 cases of each of the single-vineyard wines, Bosché and Sycamore Vineyards. Tel. (800) 963-9698

Marked by strong, dry tannins now, which lock it down and make it astringent through the finish. Yet beneath the toughness is plenty of ripe fruit, with waves of blackberries and black currants. Oak shows up as toast, and also contributes to the tannins. Nowhere near ready, this wine should begin to come into its own after 2011. ——S.H.(6/1/2010)—— 92