2019 Bond Melbury

BOND's Cabernet Sauvignon wines, sourced from select hillside estates, vividly showcase the range of Napa Valley's finest terroirs. From the more than eighty vineyards they have worked with over the past quarter of a century, five locations have been slowly and vigilantly selected to produce only the best expressions in the country, and these are now among the absolute 'Grand Crus' of Napa Valley. The Bond wines excel in beauty and aging potential. The small hilltop Cabernet vineyards, ranging in size from 7 to 11 hectares, are the basis for BOND's iconic wines. The very limited quantity and the fact that about 85% of the wines remain within America makes these wines extremely scarce in Europe. The owner of Bond is the equally iconic winery Harlan Estate - say the Mouton Rothschild of Napa Valley (Grandcruwijnen is also an importer of this)

The 5 Crus of Bond are the

• MELBURY
• QUELLA
• ST. EDEN
• VECINA
• PLURIBUS

The wines always receive between 97-100 points annually from Parker, Suckling and Wine Spectator. Bond always releases these wines in small editions, but about 50% is only offered in an assortment box - the so-called Terroir box. This contains all 5 crus in a beautiful box and this box is a collector's item for every wine lover. Click here for the detailed map of the 5 crus and more background.

Grandcruwijnen is the Dutch importer of these iconic Bond wines and supplies the wine directly from Bond winery, so no parallel obscure imports. The Bond bottles are all secured with an identification number and you can check this with a verification system so that you know for sure that you are dealing with a real Bond (there are more fakes than real Bond and Harlan on the market) and therefore also with a bottle who has not roamed the whole world in dubious circumstances. Click here to identify the bottle, because with us you can always be sure that wines come from the winery and are genuine.

The labels of the 5 Bond wines are certainly special. In the spirit of innovation and continuous improvement, we have brought 19th century banknote identifications into the 21st century to improve the look of labels while adding extra layers to our security features. Using improved gravure technology (steel-engraved), we have applied intricate details and improved the tactility of the surfaces. People still use age-old mail ink formulations to give each cru its signature color and have enlarged the guilloche on the bottom of the label. This colorful disk, consisting of classic geometric turning, contains an algorithmic interference pattern that creates a "latent image". If you tilt the bottle and look over the surface of the label, the letter "B" will become visible, invisible to the eye if you look straight at it.

When developing the labels for the wines, they thought long and hard about how best to graphically convey everything that they wanted the domain to stand for: superior attention to detail, ultimate quality and timeless authenticity, thus trying to capture the culture of to capture the family business, the character of the vineyards and the relationship between product and customer in one image - all within the scarce space that a wine bottle offers with hget design focusing on vintage postage stamps and banknotes, both of which represented the assigned value and artistic were in nature. There was a strong appeal to the idea that the engraving and gravure printing of banknotes had been specially developed to meet the highest standards and to protect against the threat of counterfeiters. After much study and research, we were introduced to the American Bank Note Company, a company dating back to the earliest days of our nation that printed American currency and stamps right up to the time of the Civil War. In the end, we were given the rare privilege of searching their extensive archives.

The name BOND is a family surname of Mr. Harlan's mother. Moreover, it also represented the common bond, or alliance, to produce the best expression of the land. Finally, given the investment in banknote imagery and security awareness, one couldn't resist making the wine label after that most classic financial debt instrument - a 19th century bond certificate.