Branding Iron is a 1.60 hectare vineyard on a gentle slope inbeteween the famous Martha’s Vineyard and Harris Vineyard in the western part of Oakville. It’s truly a great location – the vines are exposed to sunshine all day long, therefore the wine often gets a ripe fruit flavor. Still, it’s often a very elegant wine fashioned in a classic way, but compared to the wine from State Ranch it’s (as expected) richer, slightly more fruit driven and almost sweetish. There’s also a bit more oak spicyness here, although the oak regime is the same (43 percent new French oak, for 17 months), but I find it common that oak flavors tend to taste more obvious in riper wines, as if the fruit sweetness enhances the oak tannins and flavors rather than cover it. This doesn’t make the wine lesser interesting, just different, and for me ripe fruit and spicy oak (well, it’s not that spricy) tells me I have to wait a few more years before the wines true complexity reveals itself (for instance, I found many Napa Valley cabernets from 1997 to be too sweet and too oaky in the beginning – now many of them are fabulous). The lush fruit gives the wine a richer and fuller body and a more silky texture, which I find very attractive rather than complex, and also makes me wanting to serve this wine to richer dishes. Still there is enough tannin and fine acidity for making the wine keep in the cellar for a long time. Drinking it today, which is also recommended, I’d give it an hour in a decanter to let the wine open up a bit.
