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Wine Description
The Story
With the founding of Harlan Estate in 1984, we embarked upon our mission of creating a “first growth” of California. The estate’s early vineyard development began with just six acres. Today our planting is essentially complete, with nearly forty acres under vine to the classic varietals: cabernet sauvignon (70%), merlot (20%), cabernet franc (8%), and petit verdot (2%). Invariably, the finished wine is predominately cabernet sauvignon, which w...
Wine Information
The winter rainfall was slightly below average and came late, mostly in March.
Budbreak began on April 7, with flowering on May 23. Temperatures through the end of July rarely broke 80°, apart from one short spike of 100°+ in early July. August and September brought continued, even heat, with several days topping 90°. Harvest began on September 23 and finished on October 18.The yields across all blocks averaged 2.1 tons per acre.
tasting n...
Recommended glass shape
Average Bottle Price
| 2023 | 2020 | 2015 | 2014 | 2010 | 2000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 890€ +7.4% | 1 760€ +31.3% | 1 340€ +36.7% | 980€ +30.7% | 750€ +134.4% | 320€ |
This data comes from the FINE Auction Index, a composite of average prices for wines sold at commercial auctions in 20 countries. The average prices from each year have been collected since 1990. This chart plots the index value of the average price of the wines.
This is a profoundly great wine. It came across in a blind tasting as one of the most remarkable wines there, with most tasters mistaking it for a first-growth Medoc. The wine revealed an opaque purple color, a fabulously complex, sweet nose of minerals, fruitcake, cedar, toasty new oak, and pure blackcurrant fruit. Although huge in the mouth, the wine is remarkably well-balanced, with its high tannin level well-concealed by copious quantities of sweet ripe fruit, as well as huge amounts of glycerin and extract. I have consistently rated the 1991 Harlan Estate in the mid to upper nineties, but in this blind tasting with so many high quality wines, it was a big-time winner. Approachable now, this wine should be at its best by the turn of the century and last for 2-3 decades. 
(2/ 1997)