Just an INTOXICATING interpretation of ripeness and age.  Still deep staining ruby with limited sediment but slightly bricking edges.  The vibrancy is shocking.  Heady and round with a touch of alcohol, but massively perfumed of a sort you just want to smell and smell and smell and just plunge your nose into and just let it DIE there.  You never want to stop smelling this wine.  Briary and polished and leathery and pine-pitchy and Chanel and sweet and everything all at once.  I think I remember this label.  I recall when it first came out.  I had it first maybe 96, 98? and it was somewhat at the more expensive range for me at the time.  Bought a couple and remember enjoying them–this was at the time when new labels with “Names” not *places* were really starting to take hold against the stalwarts of Napa Cab we were accustomed to.  I don’t know who made this, but a search today re-directs to Diageo which tells me either someone bought the label or it was always a Sterling or BV or Chalone or something project.  Who knows.  All I know is this relatively inexpensive little Napa Cab (25$ on release) with an address in Rutherford has blossomed into the most dusky, dusty, layered, polished, nuanced 14yo wine I have had in a while.  These have just turned into STUNNING bottles of wine–I don’t care who ya are.  At 14-5, the trend of upward-AL levels has started, but the extraction and just absolute sweet, pure, chokingly-thick fruit wins everything over.  There IS a bit of AL in the nose, but I am not complaining.  Entry gives you rich, dark, chewy fruit which is thinning a bit but still has the OOMPH of another decade.  A sharp acidity brings things around and deteriorates into an absolute WHALLOP of tannin for ever and ever.  Is there enough fruit to outlast the backbone?  Tough call.  I promise to drink one of these every time you come over for the next ten years to see.  There just is no discounting that nose.  And it is STILL SOOOO rich and supple.  Just a textbook New World Cabernet.  Get yourself some.  Oh wait.  I have all there is.  Ok, then 50$/bottle one bottle limit.

2002 SOLARIS Cabernet Sauvignon Rutherford Reserve Napa Valley 14.5