Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
Greater than the sum of its parts, the urbane 2012 Foley Johnson Rutherford Estate Cabernet Sauvignon shines with its beautiful black fruit and smoky aromas and flavors. The wine's mix of elements pairs it well with a dried-aged New York strip steak. (Tasted: November 16, 2017, San Francisco, CA)
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Wine Enthusiast
From two estate vineyards, this wine is sleepy and subdued at first. Gradually warming in the glass, it becomes velvety and concentrated in black and red fruit, with dashes of clove and oak filling in the full-bodied palate. Structured and approachable, it also has a lengthy finish.
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Wine & Spirits
e broad, juicy flavors of this wine show its potential, as do the scents of roses, though the floral aspect seems pressed into the umami power of the extract. In the end, this is black with sweet tannins that keep sucking the oxygen out of the glass, giving a dark mushroom savor that should yield more detail to its layers of flavor with age.
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.