Wine Spectator 97 points - Firmly structured and tightly wound, with deep, perfumed currant, anise, sage and cedary oak notes, picking up a mineral and pebble edge and ending with a return to the spicy currant fruit. Long and persistent, with tight tannins. Best from 2009 through 2020. 2,126 cases made. –JL (Oct 15 2007)
Wine Enthusiast 98 points - The price is prerelease; it will soar on the aftermarket. This is very great Harlan. It pours dark and saturated, and the tannins are big and sturdy, not aggressive, but sweet and finely ground. Still, they give a hardness to the immaculately ripe fruit that mandates cellaring. The flavors of currants, blackberries, plums, chocolate and cedar are lush, deep and long-lasting, but just a part of the balanced appeal of this young wine. It really defines the exquisite tension between power and elegance. Best after 2008, then for many years. - S.H. (12/1/2007) - 98 (Dec 2007)
Robert Parker 98 points - The 2004 Harlan Estate is probably the most precocious and accessible Harlan Estate that this perfectionist team has made. Already compelling, the wine has notes of roasted coffee, charcoal, blackberry, spring flowers, and some background sweet, toasty notes. Dense, fleshy, exuberant, even flamboyant by the standards of Bill Harlan, this wine exhibits no jaggedness or rough edges, has relatively high tannins, but they melt away on the palate. The wine is sensationally well-endowed, long, and rich – a tour de force in winemaking. They can do no wrong at Harlan, and it is obvious, even in the most challenging vintages such as 1998, that this estate is a true grand cru/first growth, making wines of irrefutable world-class quality. Of course, none of this comes cheap, as the price is now moving up into the league with Screaming Eagle, but there are no shortage of takers.
So what’s new? Harlan Estate continues to produce only a meager 1,500 or so cases from over 40 acres of beautifully manicured hillside vineyards overlooking the Oakville corridor (to be precise, the western slopes looking down on Martha’s Vineyard and parts of the To-Kalon Vineyard). Proprietor Bill Harlan and his winemaking team of Bob Levy and global oenologist Michel Rolland push the envelope in all ways, but the results continue to be magnificent as well as increasingly expensive and rare. The second wine, which is usually around 1,000+ cases, is The Maiden, which is also a super wine in its own right. (Dec 2007)
For 25 years Harlan Estate has been committed to creating a California "First Growth" wine estate. It is located in the western hills of Oakville rising above the Napa Valley benchlands. The estate is over 240 acres with 15% of the estate planted in classic grape varietals. At the 2000 Napa Valley Wine Auction, 10 magnums of Harlan Estate Red went for $700,000.
Bob Levy met Bill Harlan in 1984 and the two agreed they wanted to make wines of the highest level. They purchased 230 acres and promptly cleared 30 acres for viticulture. The label on the bottle was created by US Treasury engraver Herb Fichter and was 10 years in the making. Harlan describes the design as a "meant to be seen on a table in candlelight not on a store shelf."
