Chad Private Reserve Red Blend 2018 | “Picture-Perfect”

Chad Private Reserve Red Blend 2018 pours purple-black to the rim.  While infused with aromas of crushed black fruits, black raspberry, and cedar. Big, bold, and intensely concentrated on the attack.  With flavors of mountain blueberry and wild blackberry, with a generous dollop of crème de cassis. Despite all the ripe fruit intensity, the 2018 Private Reserve is beautifully balanced, with finished alcohol at a modest 14.9 degrees, and round, noble late-harvest tannins that argue convincingly for 7-15 years of cellar slumber.

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Year after year, on Napa Valley’s Rodeo Drive, wineries above Lake Hennessey turn out deep, dark, chiseled Bordeaux blends that are velvet-like in texture, and packed with black fruit intensity and concentration. In the spectacular Indian summer of 2018, growers were able to pick at their leisure, often pushing back the call to harvest until the last days of October, and one of Napa Valley’s most iconic wineries crafted what may well be the most voluptuous CHAD Private Reserve to date.

Phenomenal 2018 Vintage | Big, bold, and intensely concentrated

The phenomenal 2018 vintage, described by Wine Spectator as “near picture-perfect,” one in which growers waited well until the last weeks of October to pick, offered both astounding quality and quantity. After the nightmare fires of 2017, the 2018 harvest was music to winery accountants’ ears. Even after dropping fruit, yields were as much as 50% higher than harvests of the previous four years.

Winemaker Chad Joseph

The bonanza promised by the late harvest of October 2018, in less than two months, turned into a glut. The mood, even in the high ground of Lake Hennessey, went from gleeful to somber.  That is for everyone but our young winemaker friend, Chad.  But receiving another call that quickly led to the bottling of the magnificent 2018 CHAD Private Reserve.

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Big, bold, and intensely concentrated on the attack.  Chad Private Reserve Red Blend 2018 brings flavors of mountain blueberry and wild blackberry, with a generous dollop of crème de cassis. So, despite all the ripe fruit intensity, the 2018 Private Reserve is beautifully balanced.  While finishing with alcohol at a modest 14.9 degrees.  Plus round, noble late-harvest tannins that argue convincingly for 7-15 years of cellar slumber.