Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
This sneaks up on you due to the pure focus, with blueberry, açaí berry and plum fruit cruising through on a rock-steady beat, flanked by apple wood and licorice notes inlaid along the edges. A lovely floral accent weaves through at the very end. Seriously long. Best from 2022 through 2038.
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Jeb Dunnuck
From the cooler southern end of the valley, the 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Coombsville offers a vibrant, pure style in its blue and black fruits, sappy herbs, sagebrush, lead pencil, and rocky minerality. It's beautiful on the palate as well, with a tight, vibrant, concentrated style, good acidity, and a focused texture that opens up with time in the glass. Hide bottles for 4-5 years and it will keep for 20-25 years. Rating: 95+
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James Suckling
Intense graphite adds lots of lead-pencil character to the blackberries and blueberries. Full body and chewy tannins. Sandalwood and cedar come through, together with some dark chocolate, nutmeg and clove. Flavorful finish. Impressive for the vintage. Needs two or three years to come around. Best after 2022.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The barrel sample of 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon Coombsville has a very deep garnet-purple color and boldly springs from the glass with notes of crushed redcurrants, kirsch and cassis plus hints of mossy bark, pencil lead and beef drippings with a touch of tobacco. Firm, grainy and fresh, the medium-bodied palate packs in a lot of red and black fruit layers with loads of earthy nuances and a solid backbone of grainy tannins, finishing long with an herbal lift.
Barrel Sample: 92-94
Favia Erickson Winegrowers is a collaboration between Annie Favia and Andy Erickson. Their philosophy is simple: create soulful wines that express the true nature of the vineyards from which they come. Annie and Andy focus on finding unique vineyard sites with soils, climate and aspects ideal for growing exquisite wine grapes, and develop strong relationships with their winegrowers to perfect viticultural practices. In the winery, they carefully coax the grapes into wine. Gentle handling, minimal intervention, and strict monitoring of the wine allow our grapes to speak for themselves.
Ultimately, Favia Erickson Winegrowers unites science, art and nature to produce unparalleled wines, each with its own distinct character.
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.
Situated in the southeastern corner of Napa Valley in the Vaca range, the vineyards of the Coombsville AVA enjoy a long growing season mitigated by cool, San Pablo Bay fog.