Beaulieu Vineyard, Tapestry Reserve 2015

Beaulieu Vineyard stands supreme in the roll-call of great Napa estates. “Few wineries have played as critical a role in the history of American wine”, Kelli White says in her magisterial Napa Valley Then & Now. She’s referring to BV’s illustrious pedigree, the fact that its founder Georges de Latour enticed the legendary André Tchelistcheff to Napa, and its position on the Rutherford Bench, that fine slope that rises to the Mayacamas range on the west side of the valley – among the world’s most famous vineland. The Tapestry, which sits just below the flagship Georges de Latour in the BV pecking order, is a Bordeaux blend with around half its Cabernet from Rutherford and the rest from Stags Leap District and Coombsville. It opens with a nose of hot earth and sagebrush – chaparral, the dry and evocative Californian garrigue. There’s exceptional freshness, sweet acidity and a fine bite to the tannins, blackberry and blueberry fruit and a lovely persistent finish. A wonderful, perfumed wine, an evocation of Napa, right down to that most expressive of signifiers of place, the elusive sensation of intensely dark chocolate and tang of iron known to aficionados as Rutherford Dust.