Another wine flirting with perfection is the 2010 Vecina, the nearby neighbor of Harlan Estate on the western hills overlooking the Oakville Corridor, and further south, Yountville. A Graves-like effort, it displays notes of burning embers, scorched earth, crème de cassis, and charcoal. Primordial, dense, rich, full-bodied, masculine and backward, this is another example of a wine built for half a century of cellaring. Forget it for 7-10 years and watch the pleasure unfold thereafter. To quickly summarize this project that has been remarkably successful since the debut vintage, Bond is the project of the visionary Bill Harlan, the proprietor of Harlan Estate. Along with winemaker Bob Levy and consulting enologist Michel Rolland, he continues to sign 20-year leases on highly regarded vineyards planted with 100% Cabernet Sauvignon from which he offers consumers world-class Cabernet Sauvignons that showcase different Napa microclimates/terroirs. In short, there are five separate vineyard sites in the Bond portfolio. The Melbury comes from a seven-acre parcel (sedimentary and clay soils) on steep slopes in the Pritchard Hill area near Lake Hennessey, east of Rutherford. The northern most parcel, the Pluribus comes from a high elevation (1,000 feet) site on Spring Mountain. It, too, is a seven-acre parcel planted in the white volcanic bedrock called tufa. The most southerly situated vineyard is Vecina (11 acres planted at 200- to 330 foot elevation), which is a neighbor of Harlan Estate in the Oakville Corridor, on the western hillsides of Napa. St. Eden, a valley floor vineyard, is composed of 11 acres on gentle foothills just north of the Oakville Crossroads. The Quella Vineyard is a nine-acre site in the eastern foothills of St. Helena with an interesting terroir of alluvial pebbles and small rocks of what is believed to be an old riverbed. White tufa can be found as well. Part of the objective is to vinify these wines in identical manners so that as they age their microclimate/terroir characters become more pronounced. The barrels that are deemed not worthy enough to go into the individual single-vineyard wines are blended into the Matriarch cuvée.

The 2010 Vecina is the most explosive wine in this range. At the same time, though, the 2010 is incredibly closed down. Iron, smoke, tobacco and new leather add complexity to a core of seriously intense dark red fruit. Rich, powerful and totally beguiling, the 2010 shows off massive depth and pure power. Readers will have to be patient. Vecina emerges from a single parcel within Vine Hill Ranch, one of the top sites in Oakville. The Vecina is a bit reticent today compared to last year. I don't exclude the possibility that it reaches the sublime level of the St. Eden.