The Young Inglewood Wine tasting that I attended at Fine Wine Source in Livonia, Michigan was truly an eye opener.  Here was a tasting conducted by the winegrower and winemaker Scott Young and the last two wines were so impressive, even to a curmudgeon like myself.  Here is a winery that issued their first wine for the 2007 vintage and they are staying true to form.  A small fifteen-acre estate located in some prime Napa Valley real estate and they are interested in making Bordeaux style wines, rather than the wines that are expected from the valley.  The winery produces about one thousand cases total of wines each vintage and that includes fruit that they have contracts with beyond their own property.  They have a singular pursuit and goal and they seem to be achieving it.

The penultimate wine of the day was the Young Inglewood Venn Cabernet Sauvignon 2014 with a Napa Valley AVA.  The label is different from the rest, as it shows their tightrope walker in the center of a Venn-diagram, as this wine is a blend of their own estate fruit and fruit from a sister vineyard in the valley.   While the wine is listed as Cabernet Sauvignon there is ten percent Merlot blended in to the mix.  I did not get the aging, but going by the other wines, it was probably about the same twenty-one months and in French Oak to maintain their personal identity to the wine.  The wine had that beautiful deep Cabernet color with a soft rim to it, a great nose that I expect from a wine of this caliber and a finish that just kept expressing the terroir of the vineyards.  This was not a quick production product, but like the other wines, a labor of love and passion.

If I thought that the Venn wine showed depth and terroir, I was really blown away by the last wine of the tasting.  The Young Inglewood Estate Cabernet Sauvignon St. Helena 2013 was their signature wine.  This wine will age very well and I am sure will show nuances not detected so early on, at this tasting.  This wine was almost pure Cabernet Sauvignon except for two percent Cabernet Franc and one percent Merlot.  This wine was aged for twenty-one months in French Oak, of which sixty percent was new.  Visually, aromatically and in taste this wine hit all the proper notes to me and the terroir, which is always an added wow-factor to me was so impressive.  It was pure bliss and with only three hundred cases produced, it may prove difficult to locate, but worth the search.  It was just a great way to spend an afternoon, and since someone had to, I am glad that the someone was me.