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What We Say 2007 Blend 25
SUPERIOR WINE ALERT:
Today’s exceptional Cabernet Sauvignon/Syrah blend is truly a fantastic wine worthy of our special designation of an exceptional wine. Pick up a few bottles, one or two to enjoy now and a couple to keep in your cellar for a special occasion or gift. 2007 is the finest vintage on record in more than a decade. With the coming wine shortage, please be sure to stockpile the great 2007s while you still can.
SECRET SAVINGS ALERT:
Subscribe to our Daily Dispatch (above) and you’ll always know what our Top Secret coupon code of the day is. Every day we issue a new members-only code that entitles you to have Ground Shipping included on orders of six or more and, sometimes, an added discount!
Mission Codename: The Limitless
Operative: Agent Red
Objective: Send Agent Red back to B Cellars, whose spectacular wines are made by all-start winemaker and winemaking favorite, Kirk Venge. Procure every last available case of their flagship red wine, their Blend 25, a wine made from some of the finest, ultra-premium vineyards in the Napa Valley. These include Stagecoach, Gorges III, Garvey, Williamson and others. the resulting wine is their most sought-after wine in their line-up.
Mission Status: Accomplished
Current Winery: B Cellars
Wine Subject: 2007 Blend 25
Winemaker: Kirk Venge
Backgrounder: Since we first featured the fantastic blends from B Cellars a few years ago our operatives have been clamoring for us to feature another vintage! The focus at B Cellars is blending. This is evident, not only among the B Cellars team, but also among their wines. Each wine, or potion, is a unique proprietary blend that highlights the strengths of each component varietal and balances with its other varietals. Today’s delicious selection is 66% Cabernet Sauvignon and 34% Syrah. The blending of Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah has become one of our most popular blends among our operatives and once you taste this wine, you’ll understand why they are so loved.
Wine Spies Tasting Profile:
Look – Dark garnet hues at the core, with concentrated color right out to the pretty burgundy edge. Wave after wave of chubby, wine-colored legs thin out as the move swiftly down the glass.
Smell – Lush blackberry, black cherry, blueberry and bramble mix with sweet spice, tobacco leaf, toasty vanilla, cured beef, black pepper and a hint of anise.
Feel – Full bodied and rich, right from the start, this wine becomes softly grippy at the center of the palate. Form there, a chewy feel seems to emanate outward, spreading a dark, mineral dryness as it grows. A lively acidity gives the wine a very balanced overall feel.
Taste – Dark and very rich, with overripe blackberry, black cherry and black plum with mocha, dried cherry, dried cranberry and cassis. As the wine opens, it reveals expanded follow-on flavors of dark chocolate, dark spice, dark tobacco leaf, dried meats and a hint of sage.
Finish – Extra long and loaded with dark, ripe fruit that takes a very long time to fade. As it fades, the wine leaves the mouth with a chewy coating of dried red and black fruit, spice, pepper and dark cocoa.
Conclusion – The 2007 B Cellars Blend 25 is a truly remarkable wine. We really enjoyed the previous vintages that we’ve featured here, but we are absolutely in love with this vintage. If you love dark, extracted, boldly delicious wines, please act quickly as this wine will sell out. We grabbed up every last case of this limited-production wine and when it is gone, it’ll be gone forever. Pair as you would a classic Napa Cabernet or a rich, fruit-driven Syrah. We paired this classy wine with a classic grilled burger, with all the fixings. This wine gets our heartiest Wine Spies recommendation!
Wine Spies Vineyard Check:
The location of the B Cellars Tasting Room can be seen in this satellite photo.
What the Winery Says
B Cellars
Awards and Accolades:
90 Points – Robert Parker Wine Advocate -
About This Wine:
Our flagship Blend 25 offers a multi vineyard palette that gives limitless creativity in crafting this seductive, round and very flavorful wine. In 2007 Mother Nature gave us a noteworthy growing season and this wine finished with near perfect balance. This lush blend offers aromatics of blackberry, damson, sweet tobacco and hints of earth. The palate is laden with flavors of blackcurrants, dried cherries, and exotic spice box. This wine is full bodied and complex with plenty of backbone to cellar well over the next 8-10 years.
Philosophy: Forethought and care have to lead the way when asking Cabernet and Syrah to play well together. These are among the boldest in the hierarchy of varietals. What is perhaps the most important point to consider when selecting the grapes is the site where they originate. Proper soil and microclimate are essential ingredients to properly translate the terroir into the cellar and lastly into the bottle. This blend represents the best of the valley floor and hillsides and it is as much a blend of terroirs as it is a blend of varietals. In 2007 a near perfect growing season led to ideal conditions for both Cabernet
and Syrah offering powerful wines with great acid levels. The end result found in this offering is a wonderfully polished and sophisticated wine that will continue to thrive and gracefully evolve in the cellar.
Harvest: Vintage 2007 brought us lower yields of high quality fruit. We allowed both Cab & Syrah fruit to hang on the vine until they reached their optimum ripeness of both flavor and Brix (measured sugar concentration). The grapes are then carefully hand harvested early in the cool hours of the morning into .5-ton macro bin boxes.
Winemaking; Carefully hand de-stemmed, the whole berries are moved to tank for a three to five day cold soak prior to the onset of fermentation. Total fermentation time averages 14 to 24 days. Each vineyard lot is individually vinified from fermentation to barrel and allowed to mature singly. The process culminates in blending sessions which take countless hours of intense concentration and a keen interest in allowing each component not only to express its unique characteristics, but to harmonize and complement the wine as a whole. The barrel program is 75% new tight grain French oak and once used French oak barriques for a total of 27 months.
Blending Talents, Experience and Fine Napa Wines:
Just as the blending of two or more world-class wines can make an even more palatable potion, the uniting of two over-achieving entrepreneurs can create a union that is more effective than either one alone.
When B Cellars’ founder Jim Borsack first encountered his partner Duffy Keys at a fourth of July barbeque in 2002, both executives were exploring new life paths in the wine business. Over a drop of the good stuff, of course, their journeys became intertwined when they discovered that they not only shared the same tastes in wine but were also on parallel missions to acquire vineyard property.
In the spring of 2003, they scrapped their solo endeavors, formed B Cellars, and got serious about structuring a first-rate wine company predicated upon two absolute principles: first, to produce exceptional artisan wines, season after season, by employing a multi-vineyard strategy, and second, to develop distinct flavors by blending wines from mutually complementary varietals.
Not long after they met the third key player, Kirk Venge named “One of the Top 20 New Winemakers in the World” by Food & Wine Magazine (October 2005). Kirk brought with him a 37 year winemaking legacy via his father, Nils, and a keen understanding of the Napa appellation. A bond was established almost immediately. “With Kirk’s passion for great wine, first-hand knowledge and commitment to excellence, it quickly became apparent that he was the ideal winemaker for B Cellars,” said Jim.
All team members were in concert with the idea of blending the finest red wines from the Napa Valley Appellation, and Kirk was given the mandate to create three proprietary blends of consummate quality from year to year.
The B Cellars name and logo stand for a commitment to seasonless excellence. The letter ‘b’ and the degree symbol º refer to BRIX, a wine term which defines the optimal sugar/alcohol content in grape juice that indicates the potential for greatness.
B Cellars is committed to the artisan approach, creating perfectly balanced and complex wines. We are confident you will enjoy them and be proud to share them with friends and family.
Technical Data:
Alcohol: 14.9%
TA: 0.62g/100ml
pH: 3.77
Varietal Notes: 66% cabernet sauvignon, 34% syrah
Year: 2007
Production: 840 cases produced.
