Bright ruby. Cherry and red berry aromas are complicated by dried rose, tobacco and fresh herbs. Juicy and intense, with gently sweet red and dark berry flavors and slow-mounting tannins. Becomes more floral with air and finishes with impressive clarity and spicy persistence. Eighty percent of the vines that provided this fruit are planted on steep hillsides, Ramey told me.

The 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon is a bigger, deeper effort revealing austere tannins in the finish, but also plenty of chocolaty, black currant fruit intermixed with licorice, roasted herbs, and underbrush.

The Cabernet is fuller and firmer'