Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This snugly wrapped, agile, medium-bodied wine from old vines keeps a core of raspberries, violets and black currants under a veil of silky tannins. The wine's excellent acid balance, tension and sense of depth will unleash more complexity as the tannins resolve over time. Best from 2028–2040.
Cellar Selection -
Wine Spectator
Vivid and expressive, with a gorgeous display of mulberry, plum and boysenberry fruit aromas and flavors racing through, carried by well-embedded acidity and a sleek iron spine. The fruit and minerality curl around each other like a helix through the finish, which is sneaky long. More, please. Drink now.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Kronos Vineyard is all varietal and spent 20 months in 50% new French oak. It's a deeper, richer wine that has plenty of red and black fruits as well as candied violets, exotic spice, and some minty herbs. Nicely textured, medium-bodied, concentrated, yet tight and compact, this classic, old school Napa Cabernet is approachable today yet won't hit maturity for another 4-5 years and should have over two decades of longevity.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Kronos Vineyard is rather minty and herbal, but it marries those traits with vibrant, almost floral cassis notes. Restrained by comparison to most other Napa Valley Cabernets, it's medium-bodied, with a streamlined shape on the palate that belies its intensity. Silky, long and nearly weightless, it lingers easily on the finish. The choice between Kronos and Sunbasket often comes down to vintage and personal taste—both are exceptional and highly individual expressions of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon.
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Wine & Spirits
I’ve come to accept my blind spot for Kronos, at least for when it is first released. This is a wine with its own personality, standing apart even from Cathy Corison’s other cabernet sauvignons. The 50-year-old vines ripen loose clusters of clone 2 cabernet, and Corison does not try to tame it with heady ripeness or overt oak. This 2019 is distinctly red-fruited—red currant, raspberry and hints of red licorice providing a lean richness. The fruit is sweet, the tannins bitter, the overall impression clean. Cellar it, and it should develop in ten years time into a St. Helena beauty.
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.
St. Helena is in the heart of the Napa Valley, nestled between Calistoga to the north and Rutherford on its southern border. On its western side, the Mayacamas Mountains guard it from the cooling effects of the Pacific Ocean; to its east stand the Vaca Mountains. In conjunction, these mountain ranges serve to lock in summer daytime heat. But in the evening, cool air from the San Pablo Bay funnels up through the valley, creating very chilly nights. It isn’t uncommon for temperatures to drop 50 degrees, a shift that promotes a balance of sugar ripeness and acidity in wine grapes.
St. Helena contains a plethora of different soil types in a small area, which have been enhanced over centuries by rain runoff from both mountain ranges. Its vineyards cover a variety of terrain, spreading across the bucolic valley floor and its benchlands.
These ideal topographic and climatic growing conditions easily caught the attention of early winemaking pioneers. In fact, St. Helena is the birthplace of Napa Valley’s commercial wine industry. Dr. Crane founded his cellar in 1859, David Fulton in 1860 and Charles Krug in 1861.
Today there are no less than 400 separate vineyards planted within the 12,000 acres that make up the St. Helena appellation.
Revered most for its red wines based on Bordeaux varieties, namely Cabernet Sauvignon, the St. Helena appellation is also a source of superior Syrah, Zinfandel and Sauvignon blanc.