Winemaker Notes
Bright aromas of boysenberry and cassis combine with mulled spice, orange peel, and cassia bark. The palate is dense, complex and fruitful. Wild blueberry and blackberry mingle with clove and black tea spice, which are seamlessly brought together with integrated tannins that sustain a long and luxurious finish.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
This '06 continues the winery's recent successes in Cabernet. It’s a lush, opulent wine. In its youth the smoky oak stars, along with waves of blackberries, black currants, plums and a spicy, meaty note suggesting bacon. Beautiful now, although tight in tannins, it should develop bottle aromatics and complexities for at least the next six years.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2006 Cabernet Sauvignon (79% Cabernet Sauvignon, 15% Malbec, and 6% Petit Verdot) is a refined, gracious, elegant effort displaying loads of black and red currants intermixed with licorice, mountain flora, and underbrush characteristics. Medium to full-bodied with superb concentration, sweet tannin (especially for a 2006 mountain wine), and good acidity as well as purity, this terrific wine has a Bordeaux-like weight along with the beautiful ripeness and purity of a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Give it 2-3 years of cellaring, and drink it over the following two decades.
In 1965, Jack and Jamie Davies founded Schramsberg and set out to make world-class sparkling wine in the true méthode traditionelle style on the property originally established in 1862 by German immigrant Jacob Schram. There were only 22 bonded wineries in Napa Valley and fewer than 100 acres of California vineyards planted to Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. Schramsberg was the first California winery to provide a Blanc de Blancs in 1965 followed by a Blanc de Noirs in 1967. Now their son, Hugh Davies, leads the winery’s management and winemaking team.
The Schramsberg estate in Napa Valley’s famed Diamond Mountain District is a registered historic landmark with Napa’s first caves, hand-dug in the 1880s, and its first hillside vineyards. Quality focus drives all aspects of wine production starting with access to over 120 cool-climate sites in Carneros, Marin, Mendocino and Sonoma, which result in over 200 separate lots. Unique among California sparkling wine houses, Schramsberg ferments about 25 percent of its juice in oak barrels to produce rich, flavorful, complex wines.
Most of Schramsberg’s viticultural and winemaking practices are carried out by hand: grapes are hand harvested, the wines are handcrafted, and the bottles are stacked and riddled in underground caves. The family and the winery embody excellence and innovation in winemaking, as well as preservation of their land, their history and their community.
One of the most prestigious wines of the world capable of great power and grace, Napa Valley Cabernet is a leading force in the world of fine, famous, collectible red wine. Today the Napa Valley and Cabernet Sauvignon are so intrinsically linked that it is difficult to discuss one without the other. But it wasn’t until the 1970s that this marriage came to light; sudden international recognition rained upon Napa with the victory of the Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars 1973 Cabernet Sauvignon in the 1976 Judgement of Paris.
Cabernet Sauvignon undoubtedly dominates Napa Valley today, covering half of the land under vine, commanding the highest prices per ton and earning the most critical acclaim. Cabernet Sauvignon’s structure, acidity, capacity to thrive in multiple environs and ability to express nuances of vintage make it perfect for Napa Valley where incredible soil and geographical diversity are found and the climate is perfect for grape growing. Within the Napa Valley lie many smaller sub-AVAs that express specific characteristics based on situation, slope and soil—as a perfect example, Rutherford’s famous dust or Stags Leap District's tart cherry flavors.