2022 TOR Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville

TOR Kenward Family Wines has built its reputation on sourcing exceptional fruit from Napa Valley's most storied appellations, and the 2022 TOR Cabernet Sauvignon, Oakville demonstrates exactly why Oakville remains the benchmark for Napa Cabernet. This vintage is a blend drawn from a range of outstanding sites across Oakville, fruit that delivers the balance of red, black and blue tones that defines the appellation at its best. The structure and concentration here signal a wine built for both immediate pleasure and serious aging. TOR Kenward Family Wines is based in St. Helena and has earned its place among Napa Valley's most consistently exciting Cabernet producers by working with a roster of exceptional vineyard sites across the valley. The Oakville Cabernet sits at the heart of that lineup, a wine that captures the distinctive terroir of an appellation known for balancing power with restraint. The 2022 bottling reflects the warm vintage conditions that shaped Napa that year, delivering ripe fruit framed by polished tannins and a core of iron and sanguine minerality that gives the wine real grip and seriousness alongside its generosity. The nose bursts with black cherries, rhubarb pie and huckleberry preserves, lifted by notes of black licorice and cinnamon that bring an exotic, spiced complexity to the wine's pure fruit. Underlying notes of cedar, sweet baking spice and a touch of forest floor add further layers of interest. On the palate the wine is dense and full-bodied, with a chewy, unctuous texture and layers of ripe fruit. The finish is long, well over thirty seconds, closing with fine sweet cedar and black tea notes. This is a Cabernet that manages to be both playful and powerful, drinking beautifully on release but with the structure to improve over five years or more in the cellar. Pair it with grilled ribeye, braised short ribs, or a board of aged cheddar and dark chocolate. In stock at Off Premise in Lincoln Park.