Nothing in life is perfect. But it is useful to have the idea of perfection in one’s conceptual arsenal as a regulative ideal. It provides a benchmark by which to measure the merely excellent and encourages the thought that, no matter how good something is, it can always be better. Perfection is the enemy of complacency.

But when a bottle of wine runs you well over $1500 it better be damn close to perfection. And so I wondered, while heading up the freeway to Orange County last week, whether the taste of Screaming Eagle I was about to enjoy would move the needle on my idea of perficio vinum.

All of this is well-expressed by Charles Antin in this Punch article from November. Antin is Specialist Head of Sale at Christie’s Wine Department, one of the most important wine auctions in the world. The poor man has to taste a lot of really good wine. Yet, in focusing on these high scoring, pricey wines, he realized a great deal was missing from his experience:

For the uninitiated, Screaming Eagle is the quintessential Napa cult wine. It came on the market in 1996 and immediately earned a high score (99/100) from wine guru Robert Parker. This inaugural 1992 vintage now sells for over $8000 per bottle. When you combine low production with a soaring reputation, high prices come along for the ride. Today, the wait to get on their allocation list is rumored to be 10 years. It is the most sought after wine out of Napa. Which is not to say it is necessarily the best.

In the end, wine is a collaboration needing food, friends, culture, and an occasion to reach its fullest expression. In that sense it is like a performance art in which the condition of the audience controls the meaning. I suppose then it must be a source of tribulation for the winemaker that she is seldom present when the performance takes place.

For most of us wine nerds, it is out of our price range. So when I had the opportunity to have a taste for a few hours pay and a trip up the coast, I couldn’t resist.

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer. It is the finest wine I have ever had. (Whether it is worth the price is another question) The best wines are both elegant and powerful, long, deep, and with a ceaselessly mutating flavor profile while it sits in the glass. The 2009 Screaming Eagle is all of these.

Cabernet Sauvignon, while usually powerful up front with a big finish, can sometimes come up short in the mid-palate. Not this Cabernet. Its defining feature is a silky, creamy mid-palate that is prodigious yet light and lithe on the tongue. Remarkably, with a wine so concentrated and young, the shapely tannins have already softened enough to be pleasing although they were not quite integrated.

Cassis, cigar box, and eucalyptus flavors dominate, but after about an hour in the glass, coconut emerges followed in time by dusty, spicy notes. Heat from the alcohol (14.8%) is discernable but not distracting.

Classy, polished, yet fiercely sensuous. Is it comforting or frustrating to know that, as lovely as this wine is, it will be so much better in 8-10 years?