2014 Cabernet Sauvignon - Pegasus Estate Winery

Plush dark cherry, sweet tobacco, juicy blackberry. Red currant, pronounced violet, mashed raspberry. Nutmeg and new cedar, burning incense and intense sage. Extraordinarily aromatic red fruit and floral tones explode from dusty earth and garden spice. Remarkably airy and expansive with a brilliant bouquet spilling out from a tightly wound and backward palate. Powerful tannin still integrating with oak flushed out by absolutely stellar acidity. This 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon by Pegasus Estate Winery is new world Cab with magical old world finesse.

For years Cabernet Sauvignon from California has gradually become denser, darker, and more extracted. This bottling, crafted using 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from the small Pegasus Estate Vineyard in Santa Barbara County, is absolutely not that style of wine. It is big, ripe, and clearly Californian, but its fruit profile leans sharply towards brighter red fruit in lieu of creme de cassis. This wine possesses a sense of ethereal weightlessness more reminiscent of Burgundy than Bordeaux, while still clearly flexing its Cali-Cab muscle. Notes of rosemary and eucalyptus add further nuance to the surprising dominance of flower fields and billowy fruit. This is still so young and tight but is already an incredible experience to behold. Give this 5-10 years to blossom and it will flirt with perfection. Winemaker Ken Brown's Pinot prowess has taken this single vineyard Cab Sauv fruit and created a unicorn.