Penfolds Bin 704 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon 2018

This new Bin 704 is meant as a “mirror image” of its Australian Bin 407 stablemate. This wine is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from the Napa Valley, matured for 16 months in all-French oak, 40% new, 60% 1-year-old. There’s authority here. It’s floral and generally seductive but it’s a powerhouse of flavour and tannin; it doesn’t just add to the record, it sets it straight. Roasted nuts, pure blackcurrant, blackberries dripping with juice, cocoa. It’s sheer, strong, substantial and soft at once. This is a wine that leaves no room for doubt. It’s gorgeous. It throws light, fragrant flowers into a gale force of ripe, fresh, succulent fruit. And then the surge of tannin rockets through; rugged; majestic; uncompromised. It’s big, sir. Cabernet is the coastline of wine. Bin 704 from 2018. Witness. Tasted: Feb 2021; Alcohol: 14.5%; Closure: Cork; Drink: 2023-2040;

Matured 16 months in 60/40% 1yo/new French oak barrels. In what Peter Gago describes in his inimitable fashion as 'the hemispherical inverse of Bin 407' this is a magnificently crafted Napa cabernet that offers allure from day one, yet great promise in years to come. Napa provenance is avowed confidently in a rich, ripe and succulent core of generous blackberry and blackcurrant fruit, even a hint of licorice. Fruit and high-class French oak tannins unite to wonderful effect in a refined and confident structure, meshing harmoniously with fruit and drawing out a very long finish.