Winemaker Notes
Caymus has a signature style that is dark in color, with rich fruit and ripe, velvety tannins – as approachable in youth as in maturity. We farm Cabernet grapes in eight of Napa’s 16 sub-appellations, with diversification enabling us to make the best possible wine in a given year. This Cabernet offers layered, lush aromas and flavors, including cocoa, cassis and ripe dark berries.
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
COMMENTARY: The just-released 2019 Caymus Napa Valley Cabernet could be the 49th vintage of this iconic brand I have tasted (I'll have to check my notes, I may have missed one or two)—my favorites have been the 1972 and 1973 vintages. Over the last two decades, the wines have amused me as they have taken intriguing turns in the road. The 2019 vintage, the winery's best in recent times, is exciting and profound. TASTING NOTES: This wine shows up with the lasting power of black fruit and licorice. Its layers of persistent and formidable fruit could turn a semi-vegetarian into a carnivore. (Tasted: January 29, 2021, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Spectator
A rich, showy style, with a very creamy texture to its mix of warmed vanilla, plum and boysenberry puree, and melted black licorice flavors. A mocha notes swirls around the fruit on the finish. Drink now through 2028.
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Connoisseurs' Guide
77% Cabernet Sauvignon; 23% red Bordeaux varieties. Very polished, fully ripe and very well-fruited with a generous, but an always-complementary allocation of sweet oak fitting in seamlessly with its dominant themes of juicy black cherries and cassis, the 2019 Caymus Cabernet is surprisingly open and expressive for one of its age while still showing the fine tannic structure of a wine that has nowhere but good places to go. Slightly grippy, but never tough, it is all but certain to lure more than a few into too-early drinking, and, though we must admit that it does offer a great deal to like now and will elevate the coming Christmas dinner of prime rib, it is only with patience – three or four years at the least and, better yet, five or six – that it will fully come into its own.
One of the most prestigious wines of the world capable of great power and grace, Napa Valley Cabernet is a leading force in the world of fine, famous, collectible red wine. Today the Napa Valley and Cabernet Sauvignon are so intrinsically linked that it is difficult to discuss one without the other. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that this marriage came to light; sudden international recognition rained upon Napa with the victory of the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon in the 1976 Judgement of Paris.
Cabernet Sauvignon undoubtedly dominates Napa Valley today, covering half of the land under vine, commanding the highest prices per ton and earning the most critical acclaim. Cabernet Sauvignon’s structure, acidity, capacity to thrive in multiple environs and ability to express nuances of vintage make it perfect for Napa Valley where incredible soil and geographical diversity are found and the climate is perfect for grape growing. Within the Napa Valley lie many smaller sub-AVAs that express specific characteristics based on situation, slope and soil—as a perfect example, Rutherford’s famous dust or Stags Leap District's tart cherry flavors.