Winemaker Notes
This wine is bottled with cork or screwcap closure*.
*Specific closure type cannot be requested.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve is just about pure perfection and an incredible wine in every sense. Aged 21 months in new barrels, its deep purple color is followed by gorgeous notes of bloody blue fruits, iron, bouquet garni, and flowers. Full-bodied, concentrated, and powerful, it has silky tannins, perfect balance, and an awesome finish. This beauty is a thrill a minute.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Lastly, the 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve Howell Mountain (100% Cabernet Sauvignon with a screw cap) tips the scales at 15.9% alcohol. This is another stunningly proportioned, majestic mountain Cabernet, with mulberry, blueberry, blackberry and floral notes that is concentrated, full-bodied and multilayered. This skyscraper-like Cabernet Sauvignon is majestic, super-pure and a stunner. The alcohol is totally hidden, so unless you’re paranoid, simply see the number, and have an immediate loss of reason, this is a beautiful, full-throttle, full-bodied wine that is impeccably well-balanced, with great purity, depth and concentration. Drink it over the next 15-20 years.
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Wine Spectator
Creamy vanilla- and mocha-laced oak adds flavor and texture to the rich core of blackberry, wild berry, currant, plum and licorice. An impressive showing from start to finish. Drink now through 2030. 1,500 cases made.
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.