IX Estate Napa Valley Red Wine

I smell the glass and immediately realize that Allison Tauziet and her team did a MEGA job in 2017, leaving plenty of shady foliage on the vines to protect the fruit from the intense sunlight. A simple but extremely effective move that significantly influenced Colgin's 2017 aromas, making them fresher and clearer than the vast majority of Napa Valley wines in this vintage. The IX Estate is an incredibly complex wine that entertains us with its spicy side, i.e. graphite notes, mocha and tobacco, before the aromas slowly move to the fruity side via licorice, black cherries, plums and cassis. Fine-grained tannin supports the opulent body and a barely perceptible acidity shapes this muscular wine into an extremely neat wine that, if you are patient, will be one of the very, very great 2017s, not only of the Napa Valley. Chapeau, Allison!