2013 Nichols Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Napa Valley 750 ml

Enologist Britt Nichols’ Rutherford/St. Helena “Reserve”

Take a brief glance at Britt Nichols’ resume, and it’s easy to understand where the young enologist developed her deft touch with Cabernet Sauvignon. After a stint at Jordan Winery, Nichols landed one of the most sought-after positions in the valley, working under Nicolas Morlet at Peter Michael, assisting in the making of the 2010 “Les Pavots.”

A year later, Britt was recruited by Philippe Melka, the Bordeaux émigré who Robert Parker named “one of the nine most influential winemaker consultants in the world.”

The Cabernet Sauvignons of Jordan, Peter Michael, and Philippe Melka are very much cut from the same cloth. All are deep in color, rich, and intensely concentrated. Yet unlike all too many Napa Valley Cabernets, these are also wines of great class, sleekness, and polish. In her first releases from the 2012 vintage, and even more so with her stunning 2013s, Nichols is quickly proving that the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

Our first look at Britt’s 2013s was last June at Farmstead in St. Helena. Nichols poured three Cabernet Sauvignons: The first had just been bottled, the second was to be bottled in August, and the last — far and away the most concentrated and backwards — had not yet been slated for bottling. The first, Nichols’ 2013 Stags Leap Cabernet Sauvignon, was magnificent. Saturated purple, darkly concentrated, the most supple and pliant of the three, delicious out of the gate, while arguing gracefully for 10-15 years of cellar slumber. The second 2013 was Nichols’ Rutherford Cabernet Sauvignon drawn from one of Napa Valley’s most historic vineyards. Richer, bolder, and chewier in texture, with a more muscular tannic structure, Nichols would leave the wine in barrel for two more months, allowing the tannins to soften, before bottling in mid-August.

The last wine of the afternoon was another story altogether. In his vintage report entitled “The Game Changer,” Robert Parker described Napa’s 2013s as “laser-like in focus … powerful, rich and concentrated, extremely well-delineated, and will be extremely long-lived, eclipsing even the aging potential of the 2012s.” Still in barrel, Nichols’ still unnamed 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon drawn off two valley-floor vineyards (one in Rutherford, the other St. Helena) was a black-fruit powerhouse, a Cabernet of immense concentration braced with dusty-tannin backbone. When we asked the young enologist when she planned on bottling wine #3, she wouldn’t say.

“I was always taught not to push great vintages of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon too hard or too fast. This wine is a BIG boy. It needs time. October? Maybe. December? Far more likely.” Nichols waited nearly six months before finally bottling her 2013 Reserve, and then, given the “sheer girth” of her first Reserve, she chose to cellar the 400-case production for an additional eight months before release.

The 2013 Nichols Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve is purple-black in hue. A wine of terrific purity and class, the nose features a finely delineated mix of crushed black fruits, violets, graphite, and violets, bracketed by new-wood cedar. Rich, ultra-ripe, exquisite in both its concentration and focus, filled with gobs of blackberry and black raspberry preserves, licorice, and sweet spice, the finest Cabernet of Nichols’s young career is a vintage tour de force. Pop a cork now just to set your bearings, then lay the rest down until the early 2020s … and beyond.

Compared to $75/bottle on release. Something else entirely today on this exclusive WineAccess pre-release offering. Shipping included on 4.