Larkmead The Lark Cabernet Sauvignon 2017

Professional Ratings

• 97 Wine Enthusiast
  This is the producer's top-echelon wine, made from Cabernet Sauvignon and matured in 100% new French oak. Savory earth, clove and black tea accent a core of concentrated black cherry, cassis and plum, the two sides of the equation coming together to make for a cohesive, structured and complex whole. Best 2027–2032.
  Cellar Selection
• 96 Wine Spectator
  This sports bitter orange, red currant and damson plum notes that, though slightly high-pitched, are intense and deep, stitched with a lively savory edge and carried through the finish by a long twang of iron. A wine with tension and cut. Best from 2022 through 2038.
• 96 Jeb Dunnuck
  Even more expensive, the 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon The Lark is another parcel selection and is all Cabernet brought up in new barrels. It has terrific complexity in its black and blue fruits, lavender, lead pencil shaving, scrub brush, spring flowers, and river rock-like minerality. As with all these wines, it's tight, nicely concentrated, has beautiful depth of fruit, silky tannins, and a great finish. This is classic, almost old school Cabernet done beautifully. Do your best to hide bottles for 5-7 years.
  Rating: 96+
• 95 James Suckling
  Plenty of blueberries, blackberries and currant bush. Yet, it’s always subtle. Full-to medium-bodied with very velvety tannins that are so polished and refined. Lovely flavors at the end. Needs two or three years to open. Drink or hold.
• 94 Decanter
  2017 will long be remembered for the horrific fires that devastated parts of the Napa Valley in October. Not only were wineries and homes completely destroyed, many winemakers had not finished picking and their grapes were affected by smoke taint. The other issue was heat spikes early in the season and again in September that stressed the vines. Petroski made only 130 cases of The Lark, less than half the amount he’d made the year before. Yet this barrel sample is a long, intense and brooding wine, with racy sweet fruit and savoury herbal notes.
• 91 Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
  Composed of 100% Cabernet Sauvignon and aged in French oak, 90% new, the 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon The Lark (Black Label) needs a little coaxing to reveal notes of cedar chest, pencil lead, dried Provence herbs and charcoal over a core of blackcurrant cordial, baked plums, Morello cherries and espresso with a waft of lavender. The medium to full-bodied palate is closed and taut, offering a somewhat monolithic black fruit and wood-laced expression with chewy, rather rugged tannins, finishing a tad firm.
  Rating: 91+