2021 DAOU Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon

2021 DAOU Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon

The 2021 DAOU Cabernet Sauvignon presents a deep ruby-purple color, foreshadowing intense aromas of cherry and blackberry jam complemented by dark chocolate, tobacco leaf, and desert sage. The nose also reveals secondary nuances of wet gravel, sandalwood, and plum pudding with subtle notes of fennel, black olive and eucalyptus. On the palate, a swirl of black raspberry, pomegranate, cherry preserve, and Zante currant melds seamlessly with crushed herbs, fig and cranberry. An impeccably balanced finish flows effortlessly from the juicy mid palate, leaving lovely notes of boysenberry, rhubarb, graphite, and dried thyme. This is an excellent value! Winemaker

The 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon is blended with 11% Petit Verdot, 8% Merlot and 1% Cabernet Franc and matured 10 months in 50% new French oak. Deep ruby, it has pure aromas of cassis, prosciutto, sage, thyme and pencil shavings with a classy frame of new oak spice. Medium-bodied, refreshing and supple, it offers generous, mineral-laced fruits and a long finish. This is easy to drink! This way overdelivers for the price! 93pts Parker’s WA

The wines from Daniel and Georges Daou are all the rage in California right now.  They are making some of the most delicious, mind numbing Cabernet in all of California and if you love wines like Caymus, Honig, or Frank Family, back up the truck on today’s offer.  This is full throttle, unctuous, rich and supple California Cab that I would confidently put in the ring with Napa Cabernets triple the price.  I cannot recommend highly enough.  A warning, do not spill this on the rug.    

The wine is Daou Vineyards 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon and for the money this is easily a contender for top value of the year.  Daou Vineyards is a lifelong passion of brothers Danny and Georges Daou, born in Lebanon and raised in Beirut surrounded by generous hospitality, family values, and faith.  But in 1973, their world was turned upside down. A missile, fired to begin the Lebanese civil war, struck the sidewalk in front of the Daou family home sending shrapnel tearing through the house. For two years, the family rebuilt and recovered from serious injuries, but when the war escalated in 1975, Joseph and Marie made the courageous and difficult decision to save the family, leave everything behind, and move to France to give their children peace and hope for a brighter future.  Flash forward to 1998, after taking their software firm public, the brothers sold the company and went full throttle towards their ultimate dream: winemaking.  After the brothers moved their winemaking operations out of their garage, they bought a property on Hoffman Mountain Ranch, one of the unsung premiere single vineyards in California, originally developed in 1961 by Dr. Stanley Hoffman, a Beverly Hills cardiologist and the “maestro” himself, André Tchelistcheff as a consultant, and together, they developed the Hoffman Mountain Ranch vineyard and winery, the first gravity-flow winery in America and first commercial-scale winery in Paso Robles.
Their passion, savvy, and entrepreneurial spirits are relevant in everything they produce, and this wine for the money absolutely floored me.