Winemaker Notes
The 2022 La Jota Cabernet Sauvignon opens with ripe blackberry and subtle toast, layered with hints of Asian spice, floral notes, and crushed rock minerality. The palate is structured with broad tannins that carry through to a long, balanced finish.
Professional Ratings
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Decanter
Winemaker Chris Carpenter explains that La Jota’s wines tend to offer more generous, approachable tannins—making them ideal for restaurant lists. That accessibility, he notes, comes down to thoughtful decisions around clone, rootstock, and site selection. Some vineyard blocks naturally yield softer, more inviting tannins, as opposed to dense, palate-etching structures. He seeks Cabernet Sauvignon expressions that are powerful and present, yet have a gentler texture. This blend was aged for 22 months in 77% new French oak. The 2022 is exceptionally approachable, with generous, plump, velvety tannins that still carry mountain intensity, but are beautifully integrated. The wine boasts a vibrant core of juicy mulberry fruit, perfumed with notes of thyme, rosemary, and sage. It finishes with a precise ironstone minerality and a subtle saline edge, reminiscent of pink Himalayan salt.
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James Suckling
A beautiful, balanced, elegant wine from mountain vineyards that has great structure for aging, but also is drinkable soon, after decanting. Blackcurrants, baked blackberries, spearmint, dark chocolate and cherry syrup. Tannins are velvety and fine-grained, caressing the palate and leading to a lingering finish. Drinkable now, but best from 2030.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2022 Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain is more than 90% Cabernet Sauvignon, with small amounts of Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Merlot and Petit Verdot. Twenty-two months in 77% new French oak has given a cedary veneer to the ripe cherries and hint of pine on the nose, while the full-bodied palate is plush and velvety without being soft, approachable but with enough substance to keep things interesting sip after sip, with a long, richly textured finish.
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Wine Spectator
This is fairly dense in feel, but with energy amid its core of dark boysenberry and blackberry compote. Pretty notes of iris and licorice snap fill in as a strong spine of roasted apple wood provides support, with a subtle twinge of balsam wood along the edges. A strong effort. Drink now through 2037.
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.