The 2016 'Black Magic' was scored highly with 98-point scores from top critics but the 2018 vintage, a vintage known for its superb expression of terroir, received four 100-point scores from Robert Parker's Wine Advocate, Antonio Galloni's Vinous, Jeb Dunnuck and the International Wine Report and many people have said to Tor that it is a fantastic way to end a journey although Tor feels like the journey is just beginning for TOR Wines. Yet as other winemakers came to the defense of Jeff's idea, Tor finally caved, and conversely, it made a perfect wine in Tor's opinion and it changed the way they made wine at TOR winery.

He also risked making a mess out of exceptional plots within a great vineyard, which could seem like a disrespectful act. Besides, being a small wine producer with no corporate money to cushion such a potentially expensive failure could be detrimental to his business.

Tor was afraid that it would be a Frankenstein sort of wine as he had never tasted another that tried such an unthinkable practice.

This gamble, which was highly unorthodox for a few reasons – co-fermentation and such a high percentage of Petit Verdot was unheard of in Napa – and it involved gambling with grapes that cost 'north of $100,000'. Serendipitously, the Cabernet and the Petit Verdot ideally ripened at the same time and so Jeff had the seemingly ludicrous idea to co-ferment together the Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot as it would fit perfectly into a four-ton tank and it might 'be interesting', resulting in a 55% Cabernet Sauvignon and 45% Petit Verdot blend.

2016 is considered by most wine critics, as well as Tor, to be one of Napa Valley's greatest. But for the 2016 vintage of Black Magic, Tor said that he and his longtime winemaker, Jeff Ames, decided to go into another unconventional direction with the wine, one that he labels as 'a crime of the century'.

Tor black magic wine price