97-100/100 Wine Advocate; 100/100 Falstaff; 100/100 James Suckling; 100/100 Jeb Dunnuck

Drink Date: 2024 - 2060

The 2018 Harlan Estate was tasted as a barrel sample, to be bottled in March. Deep garnet-purple in color, it needs a fair bit of swirling to reveal a wonderfully fragrant perfume of blueberry pie, chocolate-covered cherries, mulberries and black currant pastilles with hints of cumin seed, rose oil and black olives. Medium to full-bodied, the taut, grainy-textured palate delivers remarkable energy with compelling tension and a long, graceful, earth-laced finish.

"2018 had a certain sense of ease to it," Bill Harlan said as we tasted the barrel sample of the next iteration of this iconic label. "The pace was wonderful." "Mother nature was allowing us an extended runway," winemaker Cory Empting agreed. "We just started picking and couldn’t stop." As a reminder, Harlan Estate is bottled later than most other Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons. While a lot of the Napa 2018s were bottled in and around July 2020, Harlan will not be bottled until late February or early March 2021. This 2018 is looking incredibly youthful and indeed reticent, as are many 2018s, but it bears all the grace and sophistication of a wine nearing completion, promising to be an elegant, perfumed and perhaps even "perfect" expression of this very special piece of Napa turf.