Schrader RBS 2007 1.5L OWC

2007 Schrader – Wine Advocate #186 – Dec 2009: The outrageous 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon Beckstoffer To-Kalon Vineyard RBS from clone 337 blew out my olfactory senses. Possessing extraordinarily intense notes of lead pencil shavings, camphor, licorice, creme de cassis, kirsch, and crushed rocks, it exhibits full body, awesome intensity, terrific purity, and a mind-boggling finish. If Pauillac were somehow magically moved to the Oakville Corridor in Napa, tasters would believe this wine came from a first-growth Pauillac. Although it is more forward than the George III, the RBS will benefit from 4-5 years of cellaring, and will keep for 30+ years. Are readers totally confused about the multiple clonal experiments and single block Schrader Cabernet Sauvignons? All of them emanate from the Beckstoffer To-Kalon Vineyard with one exception, the George III Vineyard in Rutherford. Schraders mission statement is essentially one where their 30-year leases on vineyard parcels give them the ability to present a specific clonal study of Cabernet Sauvignon from three highly desired clones (4, 6, and 337) grown within a single vineyard. Perhaps this is more than most people want or need to know. The bottom line is that with their production averages about 1,600 cases of Cabernet Sauvignon, the wines do have subtle differences, but most importantly, all of them are extraordinary in quality among the finest wines one could possibly find in the world. Fred Schrader and his wife, Carol, hired Thomas Brown to make these wines. Their 2006s were among the finest wines of that vintage, their 2008s look to be among the top wines I tasted in that year, and the 2007s, universally acknowledged as a great vintage for Napa, are spectacular. All of these cuvees are aged in 100% new French oak, mostly Darnajou barrels with a sprinkling of Taransaud.