Schrader Cellars Heritage Clone To-Kalon Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon 2023

100 Points Parker - limited                                 Limited new release from Schrader Cellars. 100 Points Jeb Dunnuck: "The Schrader 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon To Kalon Vineyard Heritage Clone is slightly more floral and inky, with a deep purple hue and sensational blue fruit, liquid rock-like minerality, and notes of crushed violets and incense. Full-bodied, deep, and massively structured, with a great finish, it's another flat-out awesome wine in this lineup. Thomas commented that this will most likely form the base of the Old Sparky release." 99 Points Robert Parker: "Clone 31 isn't a very common choice these days, because of its small yields, but perhaps that's part of what makes Schrader's 2023 Cabernet Sauvignon Heritage Clone To Kalon Vineyard so darn good. Scents of dried spices and dusty loam accent black cherries and even a hint of something more exotic, like stone fruit. This stunner is full-bodied and supple, with a silky, dusty feel, lovely texture and weight and a balanced, vibrant and long finish. Am I underestimating it?"...Schrader followers will know that 2021 marked the last vintage of sourcing from Beckstoffer's Heritage Vineyards. These 2022 and 2023 wines come exclusively from Mondavi-owned sites. Mondavi's vineyard manager, Blake Wood, formerly worked on the Beckstoffer team at To Kalon, and Thomas Rivers Brown remains as the winemaker, so quality remains high, even if it may take a few vintages to relearn which bottlings are your personal favorites. The 2023s are a step up in quality from the 2022s, but if you are already on the mailing list, you will likely have to buy the 2022s to maintain your spot. Don't worry—the 2022s are still excellent, even if they don't flirt with perfection the way the 2023s do. The Schraders, working with well-known winemaking consultant Thomas Rivers Brown, continue to farm and produce some of the world’s greatest Cabernet Sauvignons from three fabulous Beckstoffer-owned vineyards: the To Kalon Vineyard in Oakville, the Georges III Vineyard in Rutherford and the Las Piedras Vineyard in St. Helena. To Kalon is gravelly, eluvial, loamy soils; Georges III Vineyard is an old creek bed; and Las Piedras Vineyard in St. Helena is planted on old river rock and gravelly loam. All of these blocks utilized for Schrader’s wines encompass over 25+ acres and are custom-farmed – as Fred Schrader likes to say, essentially “virtual vineyards,” even though they’re not owned by the Schraders. Their initial focus, which has proven so successful, is essentially a microscopic study of different clones planted in different blocks with exactly the same philosophy of viticulture, harvesting, winemaking, élevage and bottling. Production of all the 2012s, which was a slightly more generous and later harvest than 2013 with bigger berries, ranges from 200 cases for the Old Sparky and Georges III, to 520 for the CCS, 420 for the T6, 625 for the RBS, 370 for the Schrader, 620 for the LPV and 100 cases for the newest baby, the Colesworthy, which is a selection of the best barrels of their Las Piedras offering. Some of the other characteristics of these wines are that they all spend about 20 months in barrel, but the percentages of new Darnajou and new Taransaud varied from cuvée to cuvée, although the CCS is 100% new Darnajou, as are the Old Sparky and the Colesworthy. Finished alcohol on the 2012s is in line with other vintages, at 14.4%-14.6%. And in 2013, virtually identical numbers of 14.4%-14.6% were achieved. The consistency and the analytical aspects of the wines is mirrored in the incredible quality that Schrader has produced.                                                 

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