Winemaker Notes
The color and overall intensity of this Cabernet is a deeply pitched red with a black center. The wine has vibrant clarity which is the tell-tale sign of a great vintage. Aromatics are also vibrant with a fresh tone of red skinned fruits such as cherries and raspberries leading to earthy, soil driven notes. Exotic spices and barbecue meats can also be found in this complex and enticing wine. The mouth feel is pure richness framed by ripe, supple tannins and a fine acid structure. The wine was bottled with no fining or filtration and will drink well near term or continue to develop with bottle aging.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2002 Cabernet Sauvignon Herb Lamb Vineyard is a wonderful wine on its own merit, but by no means is it as impressive as the other three efforts from Ann Colgin and her husband, Joe Wender. This wine has an opaque plum/ruby color, a scent of unsmoked, high-class tobacco, underbrush, spice box, black currants, chocolate and espresso. It is seriously endowed, elegant, and again, fully mature, but without the nobility, complexity and sheer class of the Tychson Hill or the IX Estate.
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Wine Spectator
A bold, rich, mouthcoating style, with dense currant, anise, mineral, black cherry and cedary mocha-laced oak that turns plush and expansive on the palate; chewy tannins making a strong presence on the finish.
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.