Paul Hobbs, Crossbarn Cabernet Sauvignon, Napa, 2018

This wine is serious fun and is seriously high quality. Proper Napa Cabernet from one of the world's most respected wine-makers.

Made from selected parcels of old vines across the Napa zones in which he farms, this is made with a 5-day cold soak pre-fermentation before a long ferment and 18 months of ageing in French and American oak barriques 18% of which were new.

A dark, vivid colour, it has a gorgeous, inviting nose of Morello cherries, blueberry, colinary spices and fresh herbs. The palate is immense but balanced with flavours of wild berries, currants, crushed petals, cloves and moccha. The finish is long, dry but never hard and the generosity continues from glass to glass.

Paul Hobbs' wines always tell a story that communicates place, terroir and variety. Raised in a tee-total farmstead on the East Coast of the USA, ending up in California as a superstar winemaker didn't seem on the cards. Indeed, he studied medicine before taking the path of wine studies in UC Davis. A scientific approach to all matters wine-related may be accurate, but it leaves out the sense of charm and warmth so associated with his wines that seems far more artistic than scientific. Certainly his decisions are carefully made and planned to bring precision and clarity to the wines, but that alone doesn't bring numerous 100-point ratings: he has great charisma and passion for winemaking, taking him to numerous international projects in countries including France and Argentina. Wines made in his wineries are always noteworthy, but it is the Californian range that have so much built his reputation. Monumental and structured, typical of the region and style, his wines interestingly do not just copy the neighbours or blindly follow set standards: his winemaking is exceptionally rooted in the vineyards that he farms and his wines (though pretty intense, for sure) always have a vibrancy and freshness from his respect to the soil. It's like organics and biodynamism, but more pragmatic; and in the winery, it's like a natural wine approach, but more sensible and certainly not bound to any one creed, other than what he believes is best for any one crop of fruit in any one vintage. In short, it's hard-graft vineyard management and hard-graft, low-intervention wine making. Completely brilliant.