“This wine was too much—too much like a caricature for me,” winemaker Michael Silacci confessed to me while tasting the 2015 Opus One together again recently. “So, when we took it out of barrel to prepare for bottling we added a few more components.” Medium to deep garnet-purple color, it bursts from the glass with beautiful violets, lavender, rose hip tea and chocolate-covered cherries scents over a core of crushed blackberries, black cherries, cassis and iron ore. Medium to full-bodied, the palate is wonderfully bright and crunchy, with bags of fresh black and red berries and a wonderfully plush, finely grained texture, finishing long and fragrant.

The 2015 Opus One is the richest and most hedonistically opulent Opus Ones I have ever tasted. The sheer richness has attenuated some of the wine's aromatic brightness at this stage, but the intensity of fruit here is frankly astonishing. It will be interesting to see how the 2015 develops over the coming months and years, and, in particular, if it acquires a bit more naunce in its bouquet. Today, the 2015 is an unabashedly hedonistic, deep wine that captures the freakish concentration of the vintage.

2015 was the hottest vintage of the decade, and this remains spicy, concentrated, with incense, rosemary, sandalwood and cumin. A baby for sure, needs more time in bottle and even at ten years old I would say it is not ready. Intense and luscious, with a touch of olive tapenade, creme de cassis and smoked caramel, slight drying quality to the closing tannins, this is the only one that for me is tasting less good than it did in 2019. 21 days skin contact, Michael Silacci director. Harvest September 1 to October 8.

81% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Cabernet Franc, 6% Merlot, 4% Petit Verdot, 2% Malbec vinified separately but with an average of 21 days' maceration and 18 months ageing in new French oak. I think we can assume that Michael Silacci and his team were allowed to spare no expense. Very warm, dry year, the warmest since 2008, with only a single February storm to fill dams between the end of 2014 and harvest. There were two periods of cooler weather; one during flowering resulted in relatively small clusters and another in very early September just after the start of a protracted harvest that lasted until 8 October. To be offered on the Bordeaux Place on Monday 3 September. (The 2014 was about €225 a bottle en primeur.) Somehow Silacci and Co have managed to produce a wine that does not taste as though it's the produce of a drought and heatwave and needs the microscope required to read the alcohol level on most Napa Valley wines to discern that it is indeed 15% alcohol. Freshness is the overriding impression – thank you, Pacific Ocean and your nightly visits, presumably. There is little suggestion of anything super ripe or heady. The crimson is distinctly transparent and the nose, as well as transmitting freshness, is appetising and cedar. This is a fresh, direct wine that developed some spiciness in the glass. It is extraordinarily broachable already, although is certainly best drink with food thanks to its light charge of neat tannins. There is some sweetness but no obvious heaviness. This seems to nicely exemplify the new, fresher Napa Valley school. (JR)