Winemaker Notes
The 2019 Helms Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon is perfumed with red currant, plums, dried violets, star anise, and savory mint and thyme. The tannins are present but precise and elegant. On the palate the wine opens with flavors of plums, black cherry, wildflowers, and sweet spice. The finish lingers with notes of pipe tobacco, fig preserve, and sassafras layered with cocoa powder like tannins. While delicious now, the wine will gracefully gain more volume and complexity as it ages.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
Showing consistently (if not a touch better) than earlier this year, the 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Helms Vineyard is a medium to full-bodied, complex, incredibly satisfying Cabernet offering lots of cassis and plum fruits, ripe, integrated tannins, wonderful purity of fruit, and lifted, exotic notes of candied violets, tobacco, and spice. It's drinking nicely today, but it should have two decades of overall longevity.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2019 Cabernet Sauvignon Helms Vineyard comes from the eight-acre parcel adjacent to the winery, on the northern end of the Rutherford Bench, snuggled up under the Mayacamas range. Longtime fans of Napa Cabernet Sauvignon might recognize it as the former Livingston-Moffett site. Planted to the See selection and Clone 337, it boasts super ripe dark-fruit notes—think dimpled black cherries and cassis—enlivened with hints of mint and sage on the nose, while the full-bodied palate is concentrated and rich, with a long velvety finish.
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Wine Spectator
Ripe and with good buried energy as a brambly hint runs underneath the core of raspberry and red currant reduction. Sleek, with savory, violet and licorice notes adding fuel to 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.
The Rutherford sub-region of Napa Valley centers on the town of Rutherford and covers some of Napa Valley’s finest vineyard real estate, spanning from the Mayacamas in the west, to the Vaca Mountains on the other side of the valley.
Inside of the Rutherford AVA, bordering the Mayacamas, is a stretch of uplands called the Rutherford Bench. (These bench lands technically run the length of Oakville as well). Mountain runoff creates deep, well-drained, alluvial soils on the bench, giving vine roots plenty of reason to permeate deep into the ground. The result is wine with great structure and complexity.
Rutherford Cabernet Sauvingons and Bordeaux Blends garner substantial attention for their enticing fragrances of dusty earth and dried herbs, broad and juicy mid-palates and lush and fine-grained tannins. The sub-appellation claims some of the valley’s most prized vineyards today, namely Caymus, Rubicon and Beckstoffer Georges III.
It is also home to Napa’s most influential and historic personalities. Thomas Rutherford, responsible for the appellation's name, made serious investments here in grape growing and wine production between the years of 1850 to 1880. Gustave Niebaum purchased a large swath of land and completed his winery in 1887, calling it “Inglenook.” Today this remains the oldest bonded winery in California. Georges Latour founded Beaulieu Vineyard in 1900, making it the oldest continuous winery in the state. Latour also hired the famous enologist, André Tchelistcheff, a man credited for single-handedly defining the modern Napa winemaking style.