2017 Duckhorn Vineyards Three Palms Vineyard Merlot Napa Valley 750 ml

Any conversation about the greatest Cabernet vineyard in Napa Valley is bound to get heated. Any about the greatest Merlot site is bound to be short. That’s because there’s little argument that the grape’s greatest glory lies in the Three Palms Vineyard—and the bottle that captures it best is Duckhorn’s iconic Three Palms Merlot.

The 2017 Three Palms lives up to Duckhorn's reputation,  scoring 96-points and rocketing to the #15 spot on Wine Spectator's Top 100 Wines of 2020 list. Collectors and lovers of Napa’s iconic wines are already snapping up this perennial sell-out, and we’ve got a hunch that the Wine Access members who honored the last vintage with 4.4 out of 5 stars will do the same. 

Through the decades, as trends have come and gone, Duckhorn’s Three Palms Vineyard has stood fast as the gold standard of Napa Merlot, the voluminous, richly textured, black-cherry-infused benchmark all others are measured against. It sparked the California Merlot boom in the '80s and '90s, and has been evaporating expense accounts at blue-chip chophouses ever since. But to really understand just how remarkable its run has been up to the present day—Three Palms won Wine Spectator’s Wine of the Year in 2017—you have to close your eyes and imagine the site as it was when John and Sloan Upton purchased it in 1967.

The Uptons got it for cheap, because no one else knew what to do with the bleak, barren, rocky land that barely produced enough grass for cows to graze on. Located in one of the warmest spots in the valley, it’s unrelieved by the damp fogs or refreshing breezes that balance out other sites and afford the kind of cooler conditions that Merlot typically requires. Dry, dusty, and poor, the site was nobody’s idea of a gold mine. But the Uptons had a hunch about this spot, with its three distinct palm trees jutting up into the sky. 

Turns out they were dead right, and the challenges of the Three Palms site also lend the vineyard site its unique strengths. That rocky, unforgiving soil forces vine roots 18 feet underground through loam and sand, pulling up complex minerality into the grapes and, as the vines have aged, ever more richly concentrated fruit. The heat, while requiring constant vigilance in the vineyards, also provides the Three Palms Vineyards cuvée with its trademark full-bodied lushness. There’s really nothing else like it, and the 2017 puts its glory on full display. 

Leading with dark berry aromas tinged with dried mint, coffee, and licorice, the 2017 is ultra-concentrated on the approach with a dense core of black fruit, plum, spice cake, and black olive notes. Built on super-fine tannins buttressed by ample acidity, it finishes long and complex, hinting at cocoa and sweet tobacco spice. Like collectors have come to expect, it’s a broad-shouldered Merlot that will benefit tremendously with an hour of aeration in a decanter before serving, and will thrive for a decade-plus in the cellar. 

Today, those palm trees are a towering monument on the Silverado Trail—one that makes tourists and locals alike stop for a roadside selfie—and the wine made there stands just as tall. Vintage in and vintage out, this is a Napa Valley benchmark, and one never to be missed.