This wine from Kenwood is a monster Cabernet Sauvignon, exhibiting youthful colors, and huge quantities of fruit, extract, glycerin, and tannin. The 1986 Cabernet Sauvignon Artists Series exhibits an opaque purple/plum-like color with light pink at the rim. Its fragrant bouquet offers scents of underbrush, jammy fruit, cedar, pepper, and herbs. Absolutely colossal in the mouth, with huge amounts of fruit, glycerin, and extract, as well as staggeringly painful levels of tannin, this wine needs another 4-6 years of cellaring. It is a massive example of California Cabernet Sauvignon that should easily survive another 20-25 years. But will it ever develop any finesse or complexity? The tasting notes for this section are from two single blind tastings, one conducted in May, 1996, in California, and the other in June, 1996, in Baltimore.

Browning, with a tobacco, carob, earth and pine bouquet, this medium-weight bottling wears its age with class. The fruit is fully mature and starting to fade, but there’s enough left to support tasty, complex spice and earth notes. Inherently well-balanced, it finishes long, still showing good acids and tannins, with attractive smoke, coffee and meat notes. Drink now.——W.E.(4/1/2002)—— 90