Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Vinous
The 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon is a polished, silky offering. The 2021 is sleek and well-balanced, but despite its bright future, is also very young and in need of time. Building with time in the glass, this is classy, deep and exceptionally well-tuned.
-
Jeb Dunnuck
The 2021 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley is more elegant and restrained in the vintage, as well as slightly more mid-weight than both the 2018 and 2019. Its semi-translucent ruby hue is followed by a beautiful perfume of sweet redcurrants and raspberries intermixed with complex sandalwood, forest floor, and floral notes. Medium-bodied, with a ripe, elegant mouthfeel, well-integrated tannins, and outstanding length, it reminds of a terrific Graves from Bordeaux. It deserves 2-4 years of bottle age and will keep through 2051.
-
Wine Spectator
This is fresh in feel, with sassafras-laced boysenberry and mulberry fruit that picks up rooibos tea and savory notes. A sleek version, showing a sanguine echo through the persistent finish, this offers sneaky depth and length. Drink now through 2038.
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.
Today Cabernet Sauvignon is the star of this part of Napa’s rugged, eastern hills, but Zinfandel was responsible for giving the Howell Mountain growing area its original fame in the late 1800s.
Winemaking in Howell Mountain was abandoned during Prohibition, and wasn’t reawakened until the arrival of Randy Dunn, a talented winemaker famous for the success of Caymus in the 1970s and 1980s. In the early eighties, he set his sights on the Napa hills and subsequently astonished the wine world with a Howell Mountain Cabernet Sauvignon. Shortly thereafter Howell Mountain became officially recognized as the first sub-region of Napa Valley (1983).
With vineyards at 1,400 to 2,000 feet in elevation, they predominantly sit above the fog line but the days in Howell Mountain remain cooler than those in the heart of the valley, giving the grapes a bit more time on the vine.
The Howell Mountain AVA includes 1,000 acres of vineyards interspersed by forestlands in the Vaca Mountains. The soils, shallow and infertile with good drainage, are volcanic ash and red clay and produce highly concentrated berries with thick skins. The resulting wines are full of structure and potential to age.
Today Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petite Sirah thrive in this sub-appellation, as well as its founding variety, Zinfandel.