2009 Deep Time Cabernet Sauvignon

(from selected lots of cabernet sauvignon that spent an additional year in barrel): Bright, dark red. Musky aromas of black raspberry, currant and cola, complicated by a sexy honeyed note. Less sweet and black in character than the 2010s but impressively fresh and energetic, with captivating high-toned lift to the lightly saline flavors of raspberry, redcurrant and tangy spices. Finishes very long and subtle, with a restrained sweetness. A beauty.

The 2009 Cabernet Sauvignon Deep Time is another perfect wine. Quintessential elegance, seductiveness and ripeness are all present in this full-bodied, gorgeously rich wine along with intense minerality and abundant, corpulent, cassis, mulberry and boysenberry fruit. It takes a wild ride on the palate with incredible intensity yet a surreal finesse and focus that belie the wine’s compelling concentration and intensity. I’ll cut off my notes now since so few people will ever get a chance to try this beauty, but if you do, it takes you deep into the essence of Cabernet Sauvignon as well as the complicated think tank of Woodbridge’s brain. Anticipated maturity: now-2030. ||Proprietor Jayson Woodbridge, one of the wine world’s most compelling, outspoken, irreverent, bigger-than-life personalities, can get away with just about anything he wants to say or do simply because year after year he proves what great wine is all about from his 15-acre Kayli Morgan Vineyard east of St. Helena, his 15-acre parcel on Howell Mountain, and another vineyard on the upslope of the Eisele Vineyard (recently acquired by Chateau Latour in Pauillac), called Few and Far Between. Woodbridge was recently profiled in a wonderful graphic wine magazine called “Loam Baby,” and may have set a Guiness Book World record for the number of times the word “F***” was used in that interview. I first met Woodbridge, who hales from Canada, when he released his first vintage, 2000, which is still going strong and showing more staying power than I would ever have imagined even though I loved the wine from the beginning. It remains a sensational wine at age 13. He currently has six cuvees of Cabernet Sauvignon, the Kayli Morgan Vineyard, the Arc Vineyard on Howell Mountain, the Few and Far Between Vineyard in Calistoga near the Eisele Vineyard, a wine called Deep Time which spends considerably more time in barrel than its siblings, a wine called Precious, and depending on his mood, another wine called Fortunate Son. He also makes a hedonistic, attractive Pinot Noir from the Stanly Vineyard called Cherry Pie, and he has had enormous success with the high quality yet bargain-basement priced selections from around the world called Layer Cake. The Few and Far Between Vineyard is a 5-acre parcel on what Woodbridge calls the “upside of the Eisele Vineyard.” The only blend in his portfolio, this cuvee includes 15% Cabernet Franc. The first vintage was 2008, and this is another exceptional wine, with the 2010 achieving perfection and the 2012 capable of doing so. I only tasted two vintages of the Precious cuvee made from Woodbridge’s favorite barrels. Normally he limits production to 100 or so cases, which would be four barrels. I only tasted one vintage of the Cabernet Sauvignon Deep Time because it spends up to 40 months in barrel and almost becomes like a great chef’s reduction sauce because of evaporation. It is normally a selection from the Kayli Morgan Vineyard. It is a remarkable wine, but very little is available.||www.hundredacre.com Wine Advocate.October, 2013