Winemaker’s Tasting Notes: The 2023 Black Magic leans toward the darker more brooding end of a wine’s fruit profile. Very complex notes of spiced black plum, cassis, along with hints of cardamom, anise, a sense of petrichor, with notes of bitter chocolate, espresso, and graphite. It’s somehow intense and powerful, yet elegant and lithe on the palate. This will definitely be drinkable on release, but like a coiled spring, time in the bottle will unveil its full potential. If  Pure Magic is the beauty, Black Magic is the beast. It reminds me a bit of a combo of the 2019 and 2018 vintages, with the firmer tannins of 2019 allied with the sweeter fruit of 2018. 

Vintage: The 2023 vintage was similar to the 2018 vintage in how cool it was, how long the vintage was, and how late it started. The key to 2023 was not ‘panic picking’ just because you were harvesting so much later in the year than normal, and waiting it out until you got the ripeness and sugars that the fruit needed. The hallmarks of the wines are darker black and blue fruit spectrums and denser but streamlined tannins. A great Napa Valley vintage.

Tor’s Note: Real magic cannot be explained or reasoned. It is astonishing and challenges our imagination. It is in this wine. It is black as a moonless Napa Valley night, and limitless on the palate, a magic trick only the great wines master. It is born from a rigid barrel selection, is very limited, and is not made every year – only when it chooses to appear. As winemakers, we can coax it to emerge from the barrel, but it appears only when it is ready. For Black Magic you need not, should not, know more.

Watch the meaning behind TOR Magic below…

Cooper Kenward – Editor
Robby Piantanida – Director of Photography and Colorist