96 KEN'S WINE GUIDE - kenswineguide.com

This midnight purple colored Cabernet Sauvignon from Brandlin opens with a cassis, boysenberry, and pencil shavings with hint blueberry. On the palate, this wine is medium plus bodied and medium acidity. The mouthfeel is balanced, round, plush, and savory. The flavor profile is blueberry and stony minerality blend with notes of cedar and black currant. We also detected some hints of menthol and blackberry in the mix. The finish is dry, and its flavors and integrated dusty tannins, are very lengthy and pronounced. The Tasting Panel would decant this Cab with a very long time and then serve it with a well-marbled ribeye or seared duck breast"

95 Michael Franz - Wine Review Online

Terrific fruit — respectfully grown and vinified — then aged and finished with impressive skill. That’s what you get for your money in this wine, and it is a thing of beauty. To be clear, beauty is not what everyone seeks when buying premium wines from Napa, and if the automotive equivalent of what you’re seeking is a Hummer, you might be better off with another choice. But if a BMW is more your thing, this could be what you’re after in a current release at a high level. Fully 50% of the 110 barrels of this were new, but you’d never know that from the wine unless you had additional information about the toast level of the barriques or the time the wine spent in them, and the tech sheet I have at my disposal won’t enable me to clue you in on that. But really, given that the character of the finished product is what matters, who cares? Winemaker Steve Rogstad has managed to turn out a very serious and age-worthy Cabernet that places the pure core of fruit at center-stage, with all the winemaking accents right where they belong — as accents in the wings. As this opens with aeration, you can find the cooperage expressing itself with subtle spiciness and toastiness, but there is no icky vanilla or distracting charred notes in this wine — and I checked it again and again to assure that you won’t find them, either. The tannin management is as skillful as the wood influence, making this already wonderful with decanting and a pairing with fairly serious food — or just a nice piece of cheese.

94 Wine Spectator

Very expressive, with zesty anise and apple wood mixed with sassafras and sweet bay leaf flavors, all backed by a dense, polished core of blackberry and açaí berry fruit. Features a hint of tar that adds spine and textural contrast to the finish. Big all around, but everything is well-proportioned. Best from 2023 through 2038. 2,700 cases made.

93 Wine Enthusiast

Very ripe, lush, jammy fruit flavors give a lot of pleasure to this full-bodied wine as moderate tannins add good structure to the palate, firming up black cherries, cranberries and blueberries that show excellent depth. Best from 2025–2035.