Clos Du Val Yettalil 2021 750 ML

The dry yet measured 2021 season in the Napa Valley has produced some splendid wines, and everyone who tasted this wine was very excited both about the joy of its sensual profile as well as about its ageing potential – though it’s far from forbidding at present. It’s a saturated black red in colour, with melting, yielding black-fruit aromas on the nose (bramble, damson, elderberry). There are flowers, and a box- or privet-like freshness generating lift for those fruits. On the palate, the wine is ample and mouthfilling, packed with pure, fresh, floral fruits — yet suggesting a little exotic spice, too. The diagnostically soft yet ample Napa tannins are much in evidence, both lending the wine seriousness and food-friendliness yet also ensuring that it will endure well in time. That freshness (early evening breezes cooling the Stag’s Leap Palisades, perhaps?), so intrinsic to this wine, will surely last well, too, and perhaps even carry the wine’s beguiling floral perfumes with it through time.