Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve is another beautifully polished, balanced wine. Red and black fruits, flowers, iron, and bouquet garni all define the aromatics, and it’s full-bodied, with seamless tannins, a great mid-palate, and no shortage of length on the finish. This is another remarkable wine from this team that can be drunk any time over the coming 15 years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2014 Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve, which is 100% Cabernet Sauvignon (and finished with a screwcap), cuts a broader swath even than the regular bottling, shows sightly sweeter tannin, perhaps more ripeness, but is plush, voluptuously textured, deep, full-bodied and impressively endowed. There is no reason to defer gratification, as this wine is already singing and expressive. Drink it over the next 15 or so years.
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Wine Spectator
Balanced, deep, pure and precise, with a firm core of red and dark berry flavors and shades of mocha and cedar. For all that immediate appeal, there’s also a wonderful sense of harmony and finesse that builds and lingers through the long finish. Best from 2019 through 2029.
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James Suckling
Lots of blackberry, black-licorice and walnut aromas follow through to a full body, chewy and rich tannins and a savory finish. Bigger style but shows tension at the same time. Give it three years to soften. Try in 2020.
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.