100 Joe Czerwinski - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

Lail's 2021 J. Daniel Cuvée Cabernet Sauvignon blends lots from several high-end vineyards, including Heimark (Calistoga), Vine Hill Ranch (Oakville) and Steltzner (Stags Leap), plus Lail's own Mole Hill on Howell Mountain. It's an exciting wine, starting from the pulse-quickening aromas of raspberries and black cherries tinged with dark chocolate. In the mouth, this full-bodied beauty is richly concentrated, with a sensuous texture somewhere between silky and velvety, while the softly dusty finish shows terrific length and a spine-tingling hint of licorice. To reduce this wine to deceptively simple yet hard-to-pin-down words, it's complex, harmonious and elegant, yet it's enough of its place that it could only come from Napa Valley.

98+ Jeb Dunnuck - jebdunnuck.com

One of the finest wines in the vintage, the 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon J. Daniel Cuvee is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from the Dutch Henry Canyon area in Calistoga, Vine Hill Ranch in Oakville, and Stelzner in Stags Leap (which was added in 2018). It spent 20 months in 75% new French oak. Still tight and inward, it has sensational purity in its currant, mulberry, truffly earth, graphite, and leather aromatics. These carry to a full-bodied, rich, incredibly concentrated 2021 that has the vintage’s fresher, focused style, ripe tannins, flawless balance, and a great finish. It's going to benefit from 4-5 years of bottle age and evolve for a quarter of a century.

98+ Lisa Perrotti-Brown - The Wine Independent

Deep garnet-purple in color, the 2021 J Daniel Cuvee Cabernet Sauvignon soars out of the glass with powerful notes of warm cassis, boysenberry preserves, and black cherry compote followed by suggestions of Indian spices, mint tea, and underbrush with a hint of violets. The rich, concentrated, full-bodied palate is packed with impactful black fruit preserves layers, framed by firm, ripe, grainy tannins and a lively backbone, finishing long and shimmery.

98 Jim Gordon - Wine Enthusiast

Matching power with complexity, Robin Lail's densely concentrated, 100% Cabernet Sauvignon once again goes deep in black currants, blackberries, cocoa and toasted oak flavors while velvety, mouth-coating tannins give the structure for a long aging period. Best from 2027-2040.