The 2012 vintage benefited from significant rains in 2011, resulting in high yields and a long growing season. No one in California knew it also marked the first year of a lengthy drought. While praise for the 2013 vintage continually seems to overshadow both the 2012 and 2014 vintages, this 2012 Philip Togni Vineyard Cabernet is really coming into its own and deserves a turn at the microphone. The wine exhibits an incredibly dark, opaque ruby colour right to the rim. This is a very powerful, muscular, and broad-shouldered vintage. Tasted in August 2024, it harbours such youthful colour and pure primary fruit that you’d be hard-pressed to believe it was 12 years old at the time. The wine is endowed with robust, palate-etching tannins that are almost unforgiving, and the dark berry fruit character remains compact with nuances of sweet cassis and leather, Sichuan pepper, and dried violets, along with a deep thread of ironstone minerality, all of which builds in intensity through an incredibly bright framework of vivid acidity. The wine possesses tremendous length and poise. What a dynamic wine—definitely one that will continue to age gracefully in the cellar.

A regal, supremely, elegant wine, the 2012 is developing at a snail's pace. Readers lucky enough to own it should be thrilled. What a gem. Dark, seamless and quite structured at the same time, the 2012 is endowed with tremendous fruit purity and exceptional balance. Graphite, lavender and dried herbs are immediately alluring. The 2012 is just starting to open in its aromatics, but it remains a very young wine. It lacks perhaps just that extra kick of intensity found in the very best years, but it comes very close. It is one of the very finest wines in this vintage and is truly viscerally thrilling.

The 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Estate’s dense ruby/purple color is followed by notes of crème de cassis, licorice, mulberries and spring flowers. Medium to full-bodied and elegant, it cuts a broad swath between a great Médoc and a Napa Valley Cabernet. There is still some tannin to shed, should be at its peak in 4-5 years, and drink well for 20-25 years.