Dark garnet in color and nearly black at the core, the wine opens with concentrated aromas of ripe blackberry and wild blueberry, delicate notes of red raspberry and lavender, and a fresh waft of crushed slate. The silky entry is intense with cassis, black cherry and bitter chocolate, yet bright with red cherry and plum, grounded by notes of crushed stone. This powerful wine crescendos into a long, lingering finish.
Extraordinary in its depth, complexity and concentration, this wine requires time, patience and decanting. Best after 2020 it will reveal increasing opulence over time, and age gracefully well beyond twenty years of cellaring.
Composition
81% Cabernet Sauvignon
7% Merlot
3% Cabernet Franc
6% Malbec
3% Petit Verdot
Vineyards
- Pahlmeyer Estate Vineyard,
- Rancho Chimiles,
- Stagecoach
Proprietary Red: An Iconic Napa Valley Bordeaux Blend
Jayson Pahlmeyer's "California Mouton" - a rich, powerful Napa Valley Bordeaux blend called Proprietary RedRead More
Critics
96 Points
Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate, December 2016
An absolute stunner is the 2013 Proprietary Red Wine. This is all mountain fruit. Beautiful floral, smoky, blackcurrant notes mixed with acacia flowers and forest floor jump from the glass of this dense, full-bodied, concentrated and age-worthy wine. Like most 2013s, this is a 30-year wine with remarkable concentration, color and fruit extract. Forget it for another 3-4 years, and drink it over the following 30+ years.
Winemaking
- Winemaker:
- Kale Anderson
- Alcohol:
- 15.2%
- Harvested:
- September 14 to October 15, 2013
- Bottled:
- May 5, 2014
- Released:
- October 15, 2015
Proprietary Red is a masterful blend of five Bordeaux varietals, crafted from 75 individually fermented lots. Each varietal was
harvested and processed separately. Grape clusters were gravity-fed onto a vibrating table with two screens to sift out materials other than grapes while we removed by hand any fruit that did not pass visual inspection. After gentle destemming, individual berries were then run through another hand-sorting pass to ensure only clean fruit was delivered into the fermenters. After five days of cold maceration, the fruit entered primary fermentation for two to six weeks, then gently basket pressed. 15% of the wine was fermented in French oak 500L puncheons, and the remaining in new Seguin Moreau Icone and Taransaud French Oak barrels and aged for 20 months.
