Opus One 2012
Lovingly created at a vineyard where everything has a singular purpose, to create this extraordinary wine, world acclaimed Opus One wine is produced with great attention to detail. Traditional and modern viticultural and winemaking practices are combined; no shortcuts are ever taken, there is no room for compromise; everything must be done precisely and with extraordinary care. Only in this way can they produce this phenomenal, spectacular wine.
It starts at the vineyard where Opus One plant their vines much more densely than is normal in the Napa Valley. This dense planting encourages the vines to produce berries that are more compact, with an all-important high skin to juice ratio. The growing season for this 2012 vintage was text-book perfect; a warm and relatively dry winter was followed by heavy rains in March providing the vines with the water they needed. Then came plentiful sunshine and a summer of moderate temperatures. The Opus One vines of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Merlot and Malbec grape varietals blessed by Mother Nature to produce abundant and bounteous fruit.
Carefully monitored, just as they reached their perfect ripeness and were bursting with their most intense and lively flavors and aromas the grapes were hand-harvested, packed lightly and transported with care so as to protect the fruit. At the winery the grapes are painstakingly sorted by hand, any that do not meet stringent standards discarded. The grade A fruit then fed gently by gravity into the de-stemmer where the fruit is gently washed before they are fed into the raised, temperature-controlled stainless-steel fermentation tanks.
Each tank is dedicated to a single lot of grapes and used only once during each years harvest. Inside each tank the fruits are slowly fermented and macerated, this long process drawing out all of the color and flavors from the fruit. When it is ready the wine runs freely from its raised tank into the French Oak cask awaiting it beneath for aging. The remaining skins, pulp and seeds are pressed and aged separately this pressed wine used proportionally to provide additional backbone in the final blend.
Opus One 2012 has been barrel aged for 18 months before bottling. The bouquet is of fresh summer fruit and whispers of pungent dark forrest floor.
The mouthfeel is generous and sumptuously rounded. Smooth silk-like tannins wrap themselves seductively around the exuberant flavors of juicy hedgerow-gathered blackberries, dark black cherries and rich cassis.
An incredible vintage, Opus One 2012 is elegant and refined. Lively and acidic it is sturdy and lingering as it crescendos at its close.
