Roberts + Rogers Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon 2014
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Robert
Parker
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain is a fruit-forward, delicious, dark ruby/purple wine with medium to full body, beautifully pure notes of mulberry, graphite and blackcurrants. Silky tannins and a savory, expansive mouthfeel are impressive and the wine long and rich on the palate with excellent balance. Like most 2014s, it is fully mature and already showing evolution and immediate accessibility – even for a mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. Drink it over the next 12-15 years.
Other Vintages
2018-
Jeb
Dunnuck
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Robert
Parker -
Wine
Spectator
Located to the east of St. Helena, at an elevation ranging from 1400 to 2200 feet, Howell Mountain is considered one of the most prestigious wine growing regions in the world. Roberts and Rogers sources its grapes for this wonderful wine from the Howell Mountain sub appellation area and for the present vintages from a vineyard jointly developed by Roberts and Rogers in 2000.
The first vintage of Roberts + Rogers, Howell Mountain was the 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, released in 2007 with around 300 cases available. The wine was immediately met with a warm welcome from the privileged few to enjoy that first vintage.
In 2009, Roger Louer produced Louer Family Reserve Cabernet from his personal estate in St. Helena for a select group of friends. The wine was sourced from the best barrels of the 34 acre estate and has sold out before it was produced for the past three years. Roberts + Rogers will release the 2012 vintage under the R+R label for the first time.
Since that first release, the Roberts + Rogers wines have continued to improve in excellence, receiving numerous awards and accolades.
A noble variety bestowed with both power and concentration, Cabernet Sauvignon enjoys success all over the globe, its best examples showing potential to age beautifully for decades. Cabernet Sauvignon flourishes in Bordeaux's Medoc where it is often blended with Merlot and smaller amounts of some combination of Cabernet Franc, Malbecand Petit Verdot. In the Napa Valley, ‘Cab’ is responsible for some of the world’s most prestigious, age-worthy and sought-after “cult” wines. Somm Secret—DNA profiling in 1997 revealed that Cabernet Sauvignon was born from a spontaneous crossing of Cabernet Franc and Sauvignon Blanc in 17th century southwest France.
Today Cabernet Sauvignon is the star of this part of Napa’s rugged, eastern hills, but Zinfandel was responsible for giving the Howell Mountain growing area its original fame in the late 1800s.
Winemaking in Howell Mountain was abandoned during Prohibition, and wasn’t reawakened until the arrival of Randy Dunn, a talented winemaker famous for the success of Caymus in the 1970s and 1980s. In the early eighties, he set his sights on the Napa hills and subsequently astonished the wine world with a Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. Shortly thereafter Howell Mountain became officially recognized as the first sub-region of Napa Valley (1983).
With vineyards at 1,400 to 2,000 feet in elevation, they predominantly sit above the fog line but the days in Howell Mountain remain cooler than those in the heart of the valley, giving the grapes a bit more time on the vine.
The Howell Mountain AVA includes 1,000 acres of vineyards interspersed by forestlands in the Vaca Mountains. The soils, shallow and infertile with good drainage, are volcanic ash and red clay and produce highly concentrated berries with thick skins. The resulting wines are full of structure and potential to age.
Today Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petite Sirah thrive in this sub-appellation, as well as its founding variety, Zinfandel.