Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Jeb Dunnuck
The 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain is another winner from the genius of Thomas Rivers Brown. This beauty boasts a saturated purple color as well as a huge nose of blueberries, violets, and pine forest-like nuances. Full-bodied, seamless, and layered, with plenty of sweet fruit, it can be drunk today with ample pleasure or cellared for 15+ years.
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James Suckling
This is very tight and intense with a solid core of ripe-berry and tea character. Transparent and pure. Extremely long and flavorful. Full body. Polished tannins. Extremely long. Savory and delicious. Better after 2021.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Made from 100% Cabernet Sauvignon and aged for 20 months in French oak, 80% new, the 2016 Cabernet Sauvignon has a deep garnet-purple color, slowly revealing profound blackcurrants, baked black cherries, plum preserves and licorice notions with hints of Chinese five spice, chargrilled meats and tilled earth plus a waft of yeast extract. Full-bodied, firm and grainy with amazing freshness and loads of emerging layers, it finishes very long and wonderfully layered.
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.