Lokoya Cabernet Sauvignon Mt. Veeder 2018 (750ML)

100 JD / 100 JS / 99 WA / 98 VM

#6 James Suckling's Top 100 American Wines of 2021
#19 James Suckling's Top 100 Wines of 2021

Always one of the standouts from Carpenter, the 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Mount Veeder is another flat-out awesome wine that couldn’t be better. Revealing a dense purple color as well as extraordinary notes of crème de cassis, blueberries, mountain scrub brush, graphite, violets, and cedar pencil, it hits the palate with full-bodied richness, layers of ripe, seamless tannins (it’s a mountain Cabernet), a beautiful sense of freshness, and a great, great finish. This is one for the ages. It needs 7-8 years of bottle age, but it will be one of the great Napa Cabernets over the following 50 years or more.—Jeb Dunnuck

Blackberries, herbs, green pine needles, blackcurrants and lead pencil. Full-bodied with incredible structure and powerful tannins. It goes on for minutes. The structure is something else. Muscular, but the tannins give form and focus to the beautiful fruit. Mountain-grown Latour! Extraordinary. Try after 2026.—James Suckling

Made from 100% Cabernet Sauvignon, the 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Mount Veeder was aged in French oak barrels for 22 months, 94% new. Deep garnet-purple colored, it soars out of the glass with vivacious scents of black cherries, black raspberries and black currant pastilles, followed by nuances of pencil shavings, tilled earth, lilacs and underbrush plus a waft of crushed rocks. The full-bodied palate is taut, packed with muscular, impactful black fruits, featuring a rock-solid backbone of firm, grainy tannins, finishing with a whole firework display of earthy/minerally sparks. Give it a good 4-5 years in bottle and drink it for the next 25+ years. 1,327 cases were made.—Lisa Perrotti-Brown, The Wine Advocate

The 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Mount Veeder is such a great example of the appellation. It is at once powerful and yet light on its feet. Red berry fruit, iron, dried herbs and rose petals infuse the 2018 with myriad layers of nuance that reveal themselves with time in the glass. The 2018 needs time to fully come together, we are on Mt. Veeder after all, but it has so much potential. Red fruit, pomegranate, blood orange, gravel and dried herbs linger. The 2018 is impenetrable and massively tannic, and yet it comes across as so sophisticated.-- Antonio Galloni, Vinous Media