Staglin Family Vineyard INEO 2006: 3-pack of 750 ml bottles

Tasting Notes By Winemaker Fredrik Johansson:

The 2006 growing season was defined by a very wet winter rain season, a late budbreak, and despite the one colossal heatwave in mid-July, generally moderate temperatures throughout. These conditions provided ample hang time that allowed for even ripening, intense flavors and rich tannins that developed prior to and in conjunction with sugar accumulation resulting in wines of excellent extraction and exquisite balance.

This wine offers up a prodigious nose of black cherries and Boysenberries deepened by layers of eucalyptus, graphite and creosote with a savory ribbon of tamari and black olives skirting the edges. The pure and concentrated palate opens with a rush of dark fruits lead by black cherries, blackberries and plums tumbling into a tingling mid-palate of blackcurrants and blackberries grounded by elements of bouillon, loam, scorched earth and dark chocolate balanced by smoothly ample and velvety tannins that persist and lengthen this elegant wine.

Though it drinks well now, this wine will offer rewards of additional complexity and more sublime integration if given a few years of additional cellaring and should continue to develop and prove exciting for many decades to come.

Reviews by Wine Experts:

Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate, Issue 180, December 2008
"The 2006 Ineo, a 250-case blend of 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Cabernet Franc, and 20% Merlot, reveals an elegant, Bordeaux-like personality along with good acidity, and plenty of white chocolate, black cherry, black currant, and loamy soil characteristics. Medium to full-bodied with outstanding concentration, lovely purity and depth, good balance, and sweet tannin, it should age effortlessly for two decades. (94 points)"

Customer Reviews:

Jack Daniels, former owner of Wilson Daniels, the importer of DRC wines and Biondi Santi, September 16, 2009
I want to tell you that I had an outer body experience last night when I tasted your 2006 Staglin Family INEO. It is arguably one of the greatest examples of a red wine that I have ever tasted from the Napa Valley; to put it mildly, I was blown away. I am still drinking your 2001 and 2002 and I thought that they were the pinnacle of Cabernet Sauvignon but the blend that you put together for the 2006 INEO excells beyond them. For a 2006 it is so rounded, soft, elegant, yet complex, with layers and layers of balanced fruit, acid, tannin, and wood. The finish was long and seemed to last forever. From my experience tasting wine, I can tell you that no wine will ever be great without a long finish, maybe good, but not great. The INEO finish marks this wine for greatness.