Winemaker Notes
The high-elevation 30-year-old vineyard offers a wine of beautiful acid structure, fine tannins, savory and spicy flavors from black olives to Chinese 5-spice. The fruit has an elegant marriage of black and blue fruits both ripe and tart. A signature expression of the site is the graphite, iron and flint character that uniquely illustrates the terroir of the Aiken soils.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Black olive skin and earth with pine cone aromas that follow through to a medium body,with firm and silky tannins, and a juicy and savory finish. From biodynamically grown grapes with Demeter certification. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Scents of pine resin and hints of mint accent black cherry and cassis notes on the nose of Ink Grade's 2018 Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain. It's a sturdy, wiry effort, with the ample tannins and coiled intensity that often mark mountain wines, followed by a lingering, gently astringent finish. Like the other reds from Ink Grade, it spent time in a combination of oak tanks and barrels, yet the wood is scarcely noticeable. Give it a few years to unwind.
Rating: 93+ -
Wine Enthusiast
This powerful yet velvety wine overflows with black cherries, blueberries, clove and mint flavors on a bed of super-fine tannins that keep it soft on the palate yet provide good structure for more aging. Best from 2025-2035.
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Wine Spectator
Rock-solid, with tarry-edged grip supporting a core of steeped black currant and blackberry reduction, while singed mesquite and apple wood accents and a licorice root note fill in on the finish. Best from 2024 through 2036.
Ink Grade, Howell Mountain’s first monopole estate, produces the appellation’s greatest classical wines. The estate vineyard was first planted with vines in the 1870s by visionary pioneer, Theron Ink. Farmed organically and biodynamically since its inception and spanning eight hundred wild acres, our Estate is dotted with vine plantings that nurture and respect the natural habitat. Among the steeply terraced vineyards that cling to the iron-rich volcanic soils, there is a wild purity and raw tension here that awakens the senses. Winemaker Matt Taylor, formerly of Araujo Estate and Domaine Dujac, captures this untamed nature and preserves it by producing elegant, single-estate wines that express the pristine mountain fruit and legacy of the land. To do so requires patience and presence, taking the time to listen to what a place has to say and what it will give. This is an art. This is Ink Grade.
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.