Brandlin Estate, Mount Veeder – Napa Valley (California) Cabernet Sauvignon 2019

 Terrific fruit — respectfully grown and vinified — then aged and finished with impressive skill.  That’s what you get for your money in this wine, and it is a thing of beauty.  To be clear, beauty is not what everyone seeks when buying premium wines from Napa, and if the automotive equivalent of what you’re seeking is a Hummer, you might be better off with another choice.  But if a BMW is more your thing, this could be what you’re after in a current release at a high level.  Fully 50% of the 110 barrels of this were new, but you’d never know that from the wine unless you had additional information about the toast level of the barriques or the time the wine spent in them, and the tech sheet I have at my disposal won’t enable me to clue you in on that.  But really, given that the character of the finished product is what matters, who cares?  Winemaker Steve Rogstad has managed to turn out a very serious and age-worthy Cabernet that places the pure core of fruit at center-stage, with all the winemaking accents right where they belong — as accents in the wings.  As this opens with aeration, you can find the cooperage expressing itself with subtle spiciness and toastiness, but there is no icky vanilla or distracting charred notes in this wine — and I checked it again and again to assure that you won’t find them, either.  The tannin management is as skillful as the wood influence, making this already wonderful with decanting and a pairing with fairly serious food — or just a nice piece of cheese.