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Harlan Estate 1993

Harlan Estate, Napa Valley, United States

Harlan Estate
Napa Valley United States
  • 97
    Points
  • The 733 best
    of 3 290 954
    wines globally
  • 13 Pros of
    13 recommend
    this wine
605 97
  • Taste
  • Moment

  • Country ranking ?

    207

  • Producer ranking ?

    26

  • Decanting time

    2h

  • When to drink

    now to 2030

  • Food Pairing

    Chargrilled Steak with Peri Peri Sauce

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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...

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Wine Information

1993
Abundant winter rainfall (45+ inches) tapered to small amounts through budbreak on March 31, and into April and May.June and July temperatures ranged between 85°-90°.
Intermittent hot days in August and September resulted in several selective harvests, beginning August 28 and ending October 2, rather than one extended crush.Yields were puny, averaging around 1.6 tons per acre.

tasting notes
Dense, ruby core to garnet at edge. Ripe b...

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Latest Pro-tasting notes

13 tasting notes

Tasting note

color

Deep and Ruby red

ending

Long

flavors

Licorice, Voluptuous, Smoky, Leather, Earthy and Tobacco

nose

Charming and Closed

recommend

Yes

taste

High in Acidity, Concentrated, Well-structured, Medium-bodied and Rich

Written Notes

his is drinking at a beautiful level of maturity here. Still, it is impossible to believe this is 25 years of age. On the elegant, soft, silky side of the style range, this has all the concentration and backbone needed to provide a sublime drinking experience. Full bodied, with depth of flavor, and secondary nuances of smoke, incense, licorice, just roasted coffee beans, wet earth, thyme, a Bouquet garni of herbs and spices. The polished fresh finish feels as good as it tastes. Served blind, you would never guess this was 25 years old. There is no reason to age this any longer If you are sitting on bottle of this, I'd opt for drinking it over the next 7-10 years.

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  • 96p

What a joy it is to taste the 1993 Harlan Estate. The aromatics alone are captivating. Wonderfully nuanced and expressive, the 1993 is peaking today. Time has softened the tannins, yet there is plenty of depth, especially for a wine of this age. Readers can look forward to another 5-10 years of exceptional drinking. Although the vines were naturally younger when the 1993 was made than they are today, and winemaking has evolved, the reality is that the 1993, like many of these wines, really needed quite a bit of time to be at its very best.

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  • 97p
Dense, ruby core to garnet at edge. Ripe black fruit aromas, dusted with truffle, earth, and forest floor. With further airing, this wine reveals a more dried-herb profile, with notes of chocolate, toast, mineral, and black currant. Dense, full-bodied, and rich, it has a chewy texture balanced with ripe tannins, and a soft finish. Still quite powerful and complex, displaying considerable freshness. Appealing now, but I advise laying it down for 4-5 years, then enjoy for many more (10+).
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This wine is a statement of how not depend on overall vintage comments. Although the 1993 Harlan Estate is the weakest in the history of the estate, it has now turned into a wonderful och quite surprising wine. Making a wine like this in a vintage like 1993 (a warm spring with some rains that disturbed the flowering, followed by a cool summer that finally resulted in grapes with good sugars but not a perfect phenolic ripeness), shows either a great terroir or fantastic viticultural and winemaking skills. Or both! Only those who dared to wait for the perfect ripeness made good wines. This is one of the best, if not the best wine, I’ve ever tasted from 1993. Today it’s perfectly matured with a nuanced and elegant nose with fine notes of cedar, tobacco and that typicall grassiness that so often is found in the wines from this estate. Since this vintage is a bit lighter than the others, the minerality shows quite well here, and that’s positive to me. One could have expected the tannins to be weak, and while not firm, they are are still present.
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  • 93p
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Information

Origin

Oakville, Napa Valley

Vintage Quality

Above Average

Value For Money

Good

Investment potential

Below Average

Fake factory

None

Glass time

1h

Inside Information

The 1993 should be as prodigious as the 1992. It is an opaque purple-colored wine with spectacular ripeness, purity, and potential. Dense, full-bodied, with a chocolatey, toasty, mineral, and blackcurrant-scented nose, this wine has a rich, full-bodied, chewy texture nicely buttressed by ripe tannin. In addition, the wine reveals more noticeable tannin in the finish, particularly when it is compared to the 1992 or 1994. This is another 20-25 year wine.

Dazzling wines! I urge interested readers to get their names on the winery's mailing list if they want to purchase these wines.

Since this wine debuted in 1990, Harlan Estate has produced one of California's most impressive Cabernet Sauvignons in each vintage of the nineties. The impressive mountainside vineyard is situated on the western side of Napa Valley, overlooking Martha's Vineyard. No compromises are made in producing this dazzling wine. Proprietor Bill Harlan, assisted by his winemaker, Bob Levy, and consulting oenologist, France's Michel Rolland, have turned out a wine of exquisite richness and complexity. The wine offers the intensity one expects from a top California Cabernet-based wine, yet it incorporates a sense of grace, complexity, and elegance that clearly places it in the top echelon of California wines. The 1991 Harlan Estate (which I enthusiastically extolled last year) was recently inserted as a ringer in a blind tasting of the top 1990 and 1989 Bordeaux. It scored impressively well against the likes of 1990 Latour, 1990 Margaux, and 1990 Petrus. I have no doubts that the 1992, 1993, and 1994 are also brilliant efforts. Harlan Estate's small production is slowly inching up, with 1,800-2,000 cases produced in both 1994 and 1995. The wine, which is reminiscent of a hypothetical blend of a great California Cabernet and equal parts La Mission-Haut-Brion, Cheval Blanc, and Mouton-Rothschild, is a must purchase for those with the requisite discretionary income and ability to track down a few bottles of this knock-out wine.

 

 

Wine Advocate #108
Dec 1996		 Robert M. Parker, Jr. 95 Drink: 1996 - 2021 $825-$83

 

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