2019 Hundred Acre, The Ark Vineyard, Napa Valley, Case of 3 Btls

JD100 The 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Ark Vineyard comes from a steeper, diverse site, and it's a perfect wine in this reviewer's opinion. Deep ruby/plum-hued, with incredible aromatics of red and black plums, new leather, lead pencil, and smoked tobacco, it has remarkable complexity, full-bodied richness, a deep, layered mouthfeel, and velvety tannins. It's a wine that delivers everything: richness, depth, elegance, and complexity. As with all the 2019s from Woodbridge, it's drinking spectacularly well today yet has two decades of life ahead of it.

LP100 The 2019 The Ark Vineyard is deep garnet-purple in color. It needs a swirl or two before it strolls out with notes of creme de cassis, black cherries, and mulberries leading to hints of crushed rocks, iron ore, and underbrush plus tapenade and lavender. The full-bodied palate is concentrated, with minerals, earth, and bags of black fruits, perfectly ripe, grainy tannins and seamless freshness, finishing long and earthy.

DR100 An outstanding and profoundly layered 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from Jayson Woodbridge. I had hoped to include his Hundred Acre wines in my 2019 Napa Cabernet vintage report, but they weren’t available at the time. Had they been, they would have swept in for top honours. The reasons are many, and here, exhibited in this medium- to full-bodied Ark vineyard Cabernet are several exceptional reasons, which begin with complex aromatics of pure black cherry, blackberry, and blueberry skin, layered with nuances of cigar box, sandalwood, and vanillin. Finely-knit firm tannins build exemplary structure, balanced by crisp, blood-orange acid tension. It is a wine of very real intention to showcase the remarkable mineral superstructure beneath the ground of Ark, which is like a vertical layer cake of ancient beachfronts of red soils, black obsidian rock, and volcanic pebbles. ‘It’s a hundred million years of time sequences’, says Woodbridge, and the wine displays itself in equally complex layers of minerality, and the lingering effect is mesmerising and just draws you into the glass. Just 4.8 hectares of Cabernet Sauvignon vines are planted on this 18.2 hectare property. The vines are on the steep southeast-facing slopes of Glass Mountain in St. Helena. Purchased in 1999, it’s also the site of Woodbridge’s underground Ring winery and caves.