This massive wine is packed with towering, velvety, concentrated dark blue and black fruit mixed with notes of charred steak and roasted oak that lead to a satisfyingly rich and dense palate. With its excellent potential to age, the Schrader LPV program continues to build on its own success with the 2018 release being the finest release to date.
98 Pts. “The 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Beckstoffer Las Piedras Vineyard LPV comes from a rocky site just outside of St. Helena, next to the Dr. Crane vineyard. Despite its close proximity, this vineyard always seems to yield a more red-fruited, elegant wine compared to the more powerful style from Dr. Crane. Deep ruby/purple colored, with a killer bouquet of savory red and black fruits. tobacco, chocolate, dried flowers. and bay leaves, it hits the palate with full-bodied richness, a seamless, multi-dimensional texture, perfect balance, and a great, great finish. This is a gorgeous, utterly thrilling 2018. It should probably merit a triple-digit rating in 4-5 years and evolve for 30+ years or more.”
— Jeb Dunnuck, JebDunnuck.com
98 Pts. “Wonderful aromas of currants, crushed berries and flowers. Very deep and complex. Full-bodied and layered with loads of ripe tannins, yet they are polished and very fine. Extremely long finish. Give it at least five years to come together and refine. Try after 2025.”
— James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com
97 Pts. “Packed for sure, but there's a lot of freshness and inner brightness too, with a core of cassis, plum puree and linzer flavors gliding through atop polished structure, while violet, anise and roasted apple wood notes fill in liberally through the finish, which sports a buried but discernibly racy graphite edge. Gorgeous. Best from 2022 through 2040.”
— James Molesworth, Wine Spectator
96 Pts. “Schrader’s “LPV” comes from Beckstoffer’s Las Piedras vineyard, produced from 337 clone grown on the C block. One hundred percent Cabernet Sauvignon, it was aged for 18 months in 100% new Darnajou and Taransaud French oak barrels. Deep garnet-purple in color, the 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Beckstoffer Las Piedras Vineyard Lpv slowly unfurls to reveal fragrant notes of red roses, cherry pie, mulberries and warm cassis with hints of fallen leaves, potpourri and Indian spices. The medium-bodied palate delivers fantastic intensity with loads of exotic spice accents complementing the crunchy red and black fruits, framed by firm, grainy tannins and a lively backbone. It finishes with a beautiful fragrant-earth signature. 443 cases were made.”
— Lisa Perrotti-Brown, The Wine Advocate
The Las Piedras Vineyard, a name that translates to “the stones” in Spanish, is an exceptional rolling estate in North East St. Helena district that carries a rich viticultural history dating back to its founding by Edward Bale in the 1840s. An exceptional terroir makes this vineyard unique, where the vines contour to the gentle slope and live in rocky soil that creates a perfectly stressed environment ideal for Cabernet Sauvignon. The result is fruit that is remarkably dense and wonderfully concentrated, abundant with a provocative and elegant minerality, and bursting with deep, lush black and blue fruit flavors complemented by magnificent structure.
After a wet and cool winter, both bud break and flowering got off to a later-than-normal start. Summer brought nice, even temperatures with very few heat spikes, resulting in great phenolic development in the grapes and even ripening across all our vineyard sites. Due to the lower-than-normal summer temperatures, the grapes enjoyed long, steady ripening. This allowed for wonderful sugar development while maintaining structure. Once in barrel, the wines showed prodigious depth and incredible character that wonderfully displayed the benefits of slow, even ripening. A winemaker’s dream, the 2018 vintage has produced wines that will provide exceptional pleasure upon release and age gracefully in your cellar.
