Dominus 1985

Dominus 1985 is a mature-vintage, Bordeaux-style blended red wine from the Napa Valley of California. Rooted in values of quality, stewardship, tradition and innovation, the Dominus Estate team produces distinctive wines that express the essence of the historic Napanook vineyard. The `Grand Vin` is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot and Petit Verdot - a classic Bordeaux blend. After vinification, around 30% of the wine is loaded into new oak barrels for 15 months before bottling. "The 1985 vintage of Dominus is a very good wine, but it is still fairly structured and not yet ready for primetime drinking. The bouquet is deep and already quite complex, delivering scents of cassis, black cherries, cigar ash, a touch of road tar, dark soil tones and cedary oak. On the palate the wine is deep, full-bodied, focused and more primary than the nose suggests, with a rock solid core of fruit, fine focus and grip and a long, nascently complex and still moderately chewy finish. This wine is clearly still in climbing mode and needs at least another five years in the cellar to properly blossom. It is slightly dense stylistically at the present time, but this may disappear as the wine reaches its proper plateau of maturity in a few more years. There is a distinct possibility that once this wine truly blossoms, my score may seem a tad stingy." John Gillman, 2021