This comes from a vintage that brings together all the elements that showcase the potential of Sonoma terroirs. The wine is made from a blend of 68% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Merlot, 8% Cabernet Franc, 5% Petit Verdot and 4% Malbec, and aged in new oak for 16 months. This is the most aromatically minty of all the wines tasted, endowing it with grace notes of freshness and elegance that mingle with ripe black fruits, spices and a note of salinity. Dense but superbly polished tannins provide structure, and will carry the heft of this wine for another 10 to 15 years en route to its apogee. (YC)

The blend is mainly Cabernet Sauvignon, with the other four classic Bordeaux varieties added for complexity. The grapes were sourced from vineyards throughout Sonoma County, and the finished wine was aged in 75% new oak. It’s very fine, with concentrated, intense blackberry, cherry and crème de cassis flavors. Minerality, in the form of granite, lends a lick of stone. It’s still extremely tannic, and needs much more time before it begins to come around. *Cellar Selection*

Full bright ruby. Very reticent but pure aromas of cassis, licorice, violet, espresso and spices. Penetrating, tight wine with terrific energy to its intense flavors of blueberry, boysenberry, minerals and licorice. But still extremely unevolved and not yet showing its inherent complexity. Finishes with serious, firm-edged tannins that still need time to soften. The least yielding of the three Vérité 2007s, and the least sweet. But this very long Médoc blend has all the elements for a long and glorious evolution in bottle. (ST) 93+