Blackbird Vineyards, Oak Knoll District (Napa Valley, California) 2004 ($80):  Yes, another wine with animals on its label.  But no, definitely not a 'critter-label' wine, as in mass-market, popularly priced, millennial-generation crowd-pleaser wine.  The wine called Blackbird Vineyards is a connoisseur's wine through and through.

The vineyard called Blackbird Vineyards is a small, ten-acre property in the Oak Knoll District of southern Napa Valley that was planted to Merlot in 1997.  Until 2003, grapes from this vineyard went into the wines of elite Napa Valley producers including Selene, where Mia Klein made an acclaimed vineyard-designated Merlot from this property.  The property changed hands in 2003, and now respected winemaker Sarah Gott is custodian of the fruit.

The new owner of Blackbird Vineyards is Michael Polenske, who gave up an illustrious career in finance (for example, he was at one time President and Chief Executive Officer of Chase Manhattan Bank & Trust Co., N.A., heading up the private banking business in the Western U.S.) to pursue his dream of making wine.  The winery brands itself an 'artisanal producer of Pomerol-inspired wines.'

The 2004 Blackbird Vineyards wine is 95% Merlot and 5% Cabernet Sauvignon but it is labeled as a proprietary wine rather than as a varietal Merlot.  Although I consider the word 'elegant' to be over-used to the point of being almost meaningless, I must admit that this is a supremely elegant Merlot wine.

The aromas suggest very ripe red fruits, including a note of raspberry, along with dark plum, black cherry and a suggestion of chocolate--all of this fairly quietly, because the wine is young and tight.  In the mouth, the wine sends two signals: soft, well-knit, richly-textured fruit and yet firm structure that keeps the fruit in line.  The wine has great depth and length, real concentration of fruit character, and complexity of flavor--all the hallmarks of greatness. It also has enormous finesse.

Certainly the wine's understatement and finesse is at least partially a reflection of the Oak Knoll District, which ranks as the coolest part of viticultural Napa Valley other than Carneros.  Because it is so southerly and also flat, the Oak Knoll District benefits from coastal fog and cooling breezes off the San Pablo Bay, which slow the grapes' ripening and thus enable full flavor development without excessive sugar accumulation.  The result, in this wine, is admirable balance of aromatics to structure as well as balance of the wine's structural components themselves.

The 2004 Blackbird Vineyards wine has enough fruity character to be impressive if you drink it now, but its firm structure and its concentration suggest that it will evolve beautifully for many years, most likely becoming rounder as its tannins integrate completely.  For collectors, it is a wine worth collecting.

93 Points