2016 Screaming Eagle, Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville, Napa Valley, California, USA

2016 Screaming Eagle, Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville, Napa Valley, California, USA

Product: 20168115681
Prices start from £11,450.00 per case Buying options
2016 Screaming Eagle, Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville, Napa Valley, California, USA

Buying options

Available by the case In Bond. Pricing excludes duty and VAT, which must be paid separately before delivery. Storage charges apply.
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3 x 75cl bottle
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Description

Wow – this is a baby and has some creamy notes on the nose. There is such minerality here, and besides that graphite and pepper with tequila. This clearly has oak that needs to integrate. The palate has wonderful tension, and the oak is still present, but behind it, you can see that all the elements are in check. The acidity is perfectly judged and balances the mineral-laden fruit core. Long, young and very expressive indeed.

Drink 2025 - 2040

Alistair Cooper MW, jancisrobinson.com (February 2020)

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Critics reviews

Jancis Robinson MW18.5+/20

Wow – this is a baby and has some creamy notes on the nose. There is such minerality here, and besides that graphite and pepper with tequila. This clearly has oak that needs to integrate. The palate has wonderful tension, and the oak is still present, but behind it, you can see that all the elements are in check. The acidity is perfectly judged and balances the mineral-laden fruit core. Long, young and very expressive indeed.

Drink 2025 - 2040

Alistair Cooper MW, jancisrobinson.com (February 2020)

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Wine Advocate100/100

As usual, the 2016 Screaming Eagle is mainly Cabernet Sauvignon with a little Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Deep garnet-purple coloured, it leaps from the glass with bright, exuberant blackberries, kirsch and warm blackcurrants scents, plus touches of lavender, roses, tilled black loam, wild sage and dark chocolate with wafts of yeast extract, underbrush and crushed rocks. Medium to full-bodied, firm and fine-grained, with amazing freshness, it is layered with crunchy black and red fruits, sparked by floral and mineral notions and finishing with epic length and depth.

Drink 2022 - 2065

Lisa Perrotti-Brown, Jr. Wine Advocate (May 2019)

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Decanter98/100

Deep ruby in colour, with a youthful, precise nose of pure, ripe cassis fruit, subtle, integral cedar oak and fresh earth minerality. Some toasted spice adds a degree of complexity to the wine’s first flush of youth. The subtlety and integration of the nose is surpassed by the finesse of its medium-full body and fresh, bright, lively palate. 

Touches of tobacco and cocoa combine with some dusty mineral notes and a lovely depth of fruit, enveloping the firm but ripe cocoa-powder tannins. An elegantly integral, mellifluous finish with fantastic length.

Drink 2022 - 2047

Tim Jackson MW, Decanter.com (October 2018)

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About this WINE

Screaming Eagle

Screaming Eagle

Screaming Eagle is one of the original Californian "cult wines". Proprietor Jean Philips never dreamt that her wine would be so sought after, when in 1992, after years of selling grapes to Napa Valley wineries, she decided to find out if her home-made wine, created in a plastic trash can, was any good. She took a sample down to Robert Mondavi where they thought enough of her dark, rich, cassis-flavoured Cabernet to encourage her to bottle it, though they snickered at her proposed name. The rest is history.

Screaming Eagle's 100% Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard is ideally situated. The soil is virtually a rock pile on a gentle, west-facing slope east of the Napa River. Drainage and exposure are excellent. The property is at a point in the valley where the weather is hot enough during the day to ripen Cabernet to its optimum, yet the grapes are cooled by the afternoon breezes that blow north from San Pablo Bay.

Only 500 cases a year of Screaming Eagle are produced under the direction of winemaker Heidi Peterson Barret. The resulting wines are brimming with deep, plush layers of flavour, echoing currant, cassis, blackberries and black cherry. The tannins are soft, round and polished, yet firm enough to give every indication that Screaming Eagle wines will age beautifully for 10 to 20 years.

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Napa Valley

Napa Valley

North Coast's Napa Valley is California's most famous viticultural area (AVA), claiming some of the most expensive agricultural land in the world and producing wines of ‘cult’ status.

Its 16,000 ha of vines lie over a strip (40 miles long-5 miles wide) of diverse soils (clay, gravely, volcanic), with its northernmost end on the side of Mountain Helena and its foot in San Francisco Bay. The valley is framed by two mountains ranges Vaca (to the north) and Mayacamas (to the south), yet the main climatic influence is the cool wind and fog that is sucked in from San Pablo Bay during the afternoon, allowing grapes to ripen slowly and evenly. 

The area enjoys a variety of unique microclimates, as temperatures can vary dramatically as much as 15 degrees, from the north to the south end of the valley. These differences have led to the creation of several sub-AVAs (14 in total) including:

Atlas Peak, Chiles Valley District, Diamond Mountain District, Howell Mountain, Los Carneros, Mt. Veeder, Oakville, Rutherford, St. Helena, Spring Mountain District, Stags Leap District, Yountville, Wild Horse Valley and Oak Knoll District. The Calistoga AVA is still pending approval.

Both the “Napa Valley” designation and the sub-AVA name must appear on the wine label simultaneously, with the exception of wines from the Carneros AVA, which is shared between the Napa Valley and the Sonoma County.

Cabernet Sauvignon is the undisputed king of Napa grapes, occupying over 45% of the vineyard acreage, followed by (predominantly) Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Chenin Blanc, Riesling, Zinfandel, Merlot, Cab. Franc and to a lesser extent Petite Sirah, Sangiovese, Barbera, Dolcetto.

Recommended Producers
Frog's Leap, Dominus, David Ramey, Viader, Stag's Leap Cellars, Paras Vineyards, Heitz.

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Cabernet Sauvignon Blend

Cabernet Sauvignon Blend

Cabernet Sauvignon lends itself particularly well in blends with Merlot. This is actually the archetypal Bordeaux blend, though in different proportions in the sub-regions and sometimes topped up with Cabernet Franc, Malbec, and Petit Verdot.

In the Médoc and Graves the percentage of Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend can range from 95% (Mouton-Rothschild) to as low as 40%. It is particularly suited to the dry, warm, free- draining, gravel-rich soils and is responsible for the redolent cassis characteristics as well as the depth of colour, tannic structure and pronounced acidity of Médoc wines. However 100% Cabernet Sauvignon wines can be slightly hollow-tasting in the middle palate and Merlot with its generous, fleshy fruit flavours acts as a perfect foil by filling in this cavity.

In St-Emilion and Pomerol, the blends are Merlot dominated as Cabernet Sauvignon can struggle to ripen there - when it is included, it adds structure and body to the wine. Sassicaia is the most famous Bordeaux blend in Italy and has spawned many imitations, whereby the blend is now firmly established in the New World and particularly in California and  Australia.

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