Winemaker Notes
The 2016 La Jota Merlot encompasses all that is mountain Merlot with a structure to relish. Notes of espresso, dark chocolate, and toast follow ripe blackberry, minerality, and weight on the palate.
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
One of the top Merlots in the report is certainly the 2016 Merlot Howell Mountain from La Jota. This fabulous wine boasts a deep purple color as well as a true “wow” nose of blackberries, ripe cherries, spice, bay leaf, and ample savory, complex herbal notes. It’s medium to full-bodied, has a layered, balanced style, ripe tannins, and a great finish. Drink it any time over the coming two decades.
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Wine Enthusiast
This tremendously impressive red wine is blended with small amounts of Petit Verdot and Tannat and given 20 months in French oak, a good majority of it new. Reductive at first, it expands to show root beer, cedar and dried herb in a classically structured and hugely concentrated frame of big tannin and weight. Enjoy 2026–2031. Cellar Selection
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Wine Spectator
An elegant style, featuring lilting flavors of red currant and dried raspberry that show hints of cedar and paprika. Fine-edged, with savory richness midpalate. Dried green herbal notes emerge on the minerally finish. Drink now through 2026.
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James Suckling
This is a layered and round-textured wine with dark berries, chocolate and terracotta. Full body. Juicy fruit. Flavorful finish. Drink after 2021.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Blended of 90% Merlot, 5.5% Petit Verdot and 4.5% Tannat, the deep garnet-purple colored 2016 Merlot Howell Mountain struts out of the glass with vivacious notions of preserved plums, Black Forest cake and blackberry compote with touches of baking spices, black soil, truffles and licorice. The palate is full, rich, concentrated and earthy with firm, grainy tannins and great freshness, finishing long and earthy.
With generous fruit and supple tannins, Merlot is made in a range of styles from everyday-drinking to world-renowned and age-worthy. Merlot is the dominant variety in the wines from Bordeaux’s Right Bank regions of St. Emilion and Pomerol, where it is often blended with Cabernet Franc to spectacular result. Merlot also frequently shines on its own, particularly in California’s Napa Valley. Somm Secret—As much as Miles derided the variety in the 2004 film, Sideways, his prized 1961 Château Cheval Blanc is actually a blend of Merlot and Cabernet Franc.
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.