Mount Mary Quintet 2017

It’s 45% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 16% Cabernet Franc, 5% Malbec, 4% Petit Verdot. Mount Mary has hit a purple patch with their Quintet over the past few vintages, and their Royal Purpleness continues in 2017. Such perfume. It’s head spinningly fragrant. I’m thinking violet, cigar box, nougat, spicy biscuits, mint, chocolate and sweet wet earth, along with a core of intense raspberry, cherry and blackcurrant. It’s medium bodied, lithe but dense, rich cherry chocolate sprinkled with baking spices, crisp cranberry acidity, high pixel tannin, sweetness of fruit with a savoury ferrous edge. The finish is supremely long, all graphite and perfume, crisp definition and aniseed trailing in the aftertaste. Fine and rare. Drink 2025-2047.

I saw this wine blind recently (in a largely international tasting) and could not place the variety or region. I can see why here today: the fruit in the 2017 Quintet is almost unbelievably red fruited. It is buoyant and supple and speaks eloquently of raspberry seed, black cherry, red apple skins, blond tobacco, hints of sweet roasted meats (distant wafts only), enoki mushroom and red miso; the experience is inchoate and thrilling in equal measure. In isolation, perhaps, it may be easy to assume that the wine, given its age versus purity quotient, is simple. But given what we know about the capacity for aging carried by this vineyard/cuvée, I'd say you were grievously mistaken to judge it in that manner. This is a sleeper wine and one that hasn't even started to show us what it is capable of. It's a superstar. 13% alcohol, sealed under natural cork.