Nickel & Nickel, Oakville (Napa Valley, California) Cabernet Sauvignon 2010

The Cabernet from this vineyard is the flagship wine of Nickel & Nickel, which is already saying something since this is one of the most outstanding wineries in Napa, but there’s more to be said:  This was the single most impressive Cabernet that I tasted in 2013, out of a set including hundreds of wines.  Featuring gorgeous fruit recalling blackberries, black cherries and black currents, it is accented with lovely notes of spices and toast as well as subtle backnotes of cocoa powder and espresso beans.  The wine’s fruit and structural components are so finely woven that it is already fabulously delicious, and yet it will only get better for a least another decade — and perhaps much longer.  To put the wine’s price into context, this is a worthy competitor to the wonderful first- and second-growth Bordeaux wines made in 2009 and 2010, and yet it costs less than one-fifth of the pricier Bordeaux wines from those great vintages.