It offers pleasure today but should benefit from 4-5 years in the cellar, and my money is on it evolving for 30 years or more. It plays in the finesse-driven end of the spectrum yet is concentrated and seamless, with serious length. With a Pomerol-like elegance and purity, it's medium to full-bodied and has wonderful tannins, flawless balance, and a great finish. This deep purple-hued effort leans to lively, fresher side of the vintage but has a brilliant, utterly classic style in its crème de cassis and blue-tinged fruit as well as notes of lead pencil, candied violets, damp earth, and chocolate-like nuances. The 2018 Opus One is a blend of 84% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Petit Verdot, and the rest Merlot and Cabernet Franc. Medium to full-bodied, the palate is packed with tightly wound layers of crunchy black fruits, supported by firm, grainy tannins and fantastic freshness, finishing with lifted fruitiness and on a lingering mineral note.
#OPUS ONE RED WINE PLUS#
Very deep garnet-purple in color, the 2018 Opus One soars out of the glass with bright, bold boysenberries, warm cassis and ripe, juicy black plums notes, plus emerging nuances of lilacs, oolong tea, cinnamon stick, tilled soil and black truffles. The quality of tannin is exquisite with wonderful polish and refinement. Fresh herbs, such as bay leaf and lemon grass highlight the dark fruit. It’s full-bodied, yet ever so balanced and refined, with super fine tannins that last for minutes. Opus One receives an additional year and a half of bottle age before the wine is released- some three years after harvest.Extremely perfumed and floral with lavender, lilacs and violets to the sweet, ripe berries, such as blackberries and blackcurrants. Fining clarifies and polishes the wine.Īfter about a year and a half in barrel, the wine is bottled. Carefully added in more turbid vintages, fresh egg whites attract the very small particles that would otherwise remain in suspension. During the first year, Michael continually tastes from each French oak barrel, evaluating the effect of the wood on the wine.įining, which occurs after the final racking in tank, also illustrates the hand-crafted nature of Opus One. Once the wine is safely in barrel, the topping, racking, and fining processes begin. To provide backbone to the wine, a portion of the press is often added to the final blend. Like the free-run wine, the pressed wine is put into barrels to be aged. In another gentle, unhurried step, the skins, seeds, and pulp are pressed. The tanks are raised so the free-run wine can flow into new French oak barrels the remaining skins tumble easily into basket presses. The long, warm maceration in temperature-controlled tanks draws out myriad rich flavors and colors from the skins, seeds, and pulp. Stainless steel is the perfect material – it provides a cool and gentle beginning to the fermentation process.īecause Opus One makes only one wine, each tank can be dedicated to a single lot of grapes each tank is used only once during harvest, so fermentation and maceration need never be rushed. Only gravity is used to move the berries from the destemmer into the stainless steel fermenting tanks below. The grapes are hand-sorted: any leaves or imperfect grapes are discarded. The integrity of the grapes is assured by placing the clusters in small picking boxes that hold no more than thirty-five pounds (sixteen kilograms). Guided by the vision of our founders, our winemaker Michael Silacci combines intuition and technical acumen with the dual perspective of viticulturist and winemakerĮvery cluster of Opus One grapes is hand-harvested, and just as much care is taken when transporting them from the vineyard to the winery. Winemaking at Opus One resolves to a single goal: to produce an extraordinary wine. In 1989 a new winery was built just down the road, the first vintage from the new winery was from 1991 and was released in 1994. For a while it was the most expensive Californian wine costing $50 and to date still ranks among the most expensive red wines produced in the Napa Valley, commanding prices of $305 per bottle on average. The first vintage, 1979 was released in 1984 at the same time as the 1980 vintage. The creation of this winery venture in 1980 was big news in the wine industry de Rothschild's involvement added an air of respectability to the burgeoning Napa wine region. It is located across State Route 29 from the Robert Mondavi Winery. The winery was founded as a joint venture between Baron Philippe de Rothschild of Château Mouton Rothschild and Robert Mondavi to create a single Bordeaux style blend based upon Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine was called napamedoc until 1982 when it was named Opus One. Opus One Winery is a winery in Oakville, California, United States.
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