Winemaker Notes
Tightly knit and holding its winning hand close to the vest, this classic Kronos presents with a potpourri of boysenberry, plum, white pepper, anise, cocoa and baking spices. Garrigue and violets light up the aromas, and timeless intensity and density promise great things to come. The finish goes on and on.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Cathy Corisons’ iconic Kronos Vineyard bottling from St. Helena is made of 100% Cabernet Sauvignon aged 20 months in 50% new French oak. Remarkable purity of fruit and savoury aromatics. This is a beautiful wine with finely-delineated blackberry, black cherry, black currant notes and expressive graphite minerality. Fresh, lively, and built like a skyscraper, with long, firm beams of cedary tannins and tangy blood orange acidity. The finish is long, vivid, and marked by dried herbs, citrus, and wildflowers: a real highlight and a bright spot in this challenging vintage.
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Wine Enthusiast
Deep-seated black fruits and light smoky-spicy oak notes waft from the glass before full tannins and saturated black cherries and black currants wake up the palate. This agile, elegant wine is enjoyable now after decanting, but needs further age to show its full potential. Best from 2027–2037.
Cellar Selection -
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Corison's 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon Kronos Vineyard is more floral than the other offerings, easily marrying hints of thyme blossom with fresh cassis and a delicate touch of vanilla. It's medium to full-bodied, marginally larger in scale than even the Sunbasket bottling, but still refined, balanced and elegant, with a long, silky-textured finish.
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Wine & Spirits
Fragrant and formidable, this 2020 cabernet stands apart, the vines now more than half a century old, rooted deep into their benchland soils, farmed to ripen early. It’s a welcoming vintage of Kronos, the tannins gentle in their youth, while the wine has detail and keeps giving new perspectives as it opens. This has fruit, but it isn’t like any specific fruit you could name, it’s just Kronos, somewhere between a berry and a fresh woodland mushroom. There’s a coolness to the wine that makes it completely Cathy Corison’s own. No one else grows fruit in the heat of St. Helena with this kind of cool savor. She has made the produce of the land a reflection of her intelligence and spirit.
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon Kronos Vineyard offers a touch more density and depth, with medium to full-bodied aromas and flavors of ripe currants, blackberries, tobacco, and leather, with a kiss of background minerality. This concentrated, layered 2020 has tons to love, and I d put it up with the best of the vintage.
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James Suckling
Blackcurrants, cigar box and dried herbs on top of the blackberries and Spanish chocolate. Deep and rich, but still quite fresh and vertical on the palate, with dense and fine-grained tannins dunked into the zesty, dark fruit. Well structured.
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Vinous
The 2020 Cabernet Sauvignon Kronos Vineyard is a powerhouse. Black cherry, mocha, incense, tobacco and gravel add to an impression of searing gravitas. Kronos is often imposing in its youth. That is certainly the case in 2020 as well, although there is also some finesse missing in the quality of the tannins. Let's see what time brings here.
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Wine Spectator
Bright and open-knit, with a pretty hibiscus note leading the way for friendly plum and loganberry fruit. Offers a lightly toasty frame and good energy, keeping this on the sleek, fresh side through the finish. A nice effort for the vintage. Drink now through 2035.
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.