Neil Valenzuela

9.3

Deep purple color. Aromas of blackberry, black cherry, cassis and licorice. Loads of black fruit on the palate, cigar box and earthy finish. Very nice double magnum.

🏅97 Points - Robert Parker
🏅93-96 Points - Jeb Dunnuck — 2 days ago

Joe DAscoli

9.3

Super sweet and oaky on first open but matured up with a 3 hour decant

Still quite fruity but with steak, it gives a lot of red berry fruit and the oak is reasonable and the sweetness is gone with the airtime.

Overall good wine but I thought it lost out to the Paul Hobbs LPV ‘14. — 18 days ago

Jenks

9.2

2020 Silver Oak at the sky club. Hype Napa cab, would normally avoid this like the plague but not gonna lie it’s pretty fucking good. Would I buy it? No. Will I throw excess miles at it, absolutely. — 11 days ago

Rick Phillips

9.6

After 35 years I was not expecting much. Especially when the cork disintegrated on opening. Aureated on decanting and was happily surprised. After about 20 minutes opened to dark chocolate, leather but so smooth. The last glass was pure delight. Howell Mountain at its best! — 7 days ago

with Letha

Shay A

9.5

After missing a ‘70s and ‘80s Heitz vertical many years ago, I vowed to seek out a bottle as all the comments from the tasting were astoundingly positive. My last bottle of Heitz Martha’s was the ‘01 (which was great) a few years ago, but at 46yrs, this was quite the experience.

The ‘78 has a bit of a legendary status, so expectations were high. Upon opening, the cork was in good shape (sigh of relief) and the color was unbelievably dark ruby with some bricking (another sigh of relief). The singular signature menthol/eucalyptus began to fill the glass, alongside aromatics of red berry fruits, espresso, some sort of sweet brown sugar/caramel note, and a savory-graphite type note too. Beautifully elegant on the palate with more red fruit, herbs (bay leaf?), and even some pipe tobacco (subdued, not in your face), but it sports the classical old Napa cab profile that is pure. Spectacular wine, and I could simply smell the wine all day…the aromatics were so powerful the entire time.

Open in bottle for three hours and powered through the entire time. Wish I had another so I could have the same experience! — 25 days ago

Mike Obley

9.6

Lovely wine that took about an hour to really open up. Sad that this has gotten so pricy! — 9 days ago

with Lauren

Scott@Mister A’s-San Diego

9.5

2005 vintage. From Magnum. Only suggestions of baby fat remaining as this is chiseled currently. Medium-heavy body but less weighty than expected. An unexpected and pleasant surprise. 12.11.24. — 7 days ago

Andrew Cullimore

9.0

Medium deep ruby , quite narrow rim . Touch of earthy menthol , tobacco , spicy blackcurrant, grafite . On the palate quite dusty , with earthy sous bois , blackcurrant, ripe blackberry , grafite and tobacco , cocoa hints. Quite rich but balanced , good acidity, quite dusty tannins . This is probably at peak now though will last well another decade perhaps . — 19 days ago

Kamall

8.9

Still packing a tannic punch, fruit is very much in the background. A little disjointed at this point? Will wait a while on my other bottles. This was my favorite vintage at first taste. — 8 days ago

Jason Muniz

9.5

Great color, taste and deep berry notes/spice — 16 days ago