A fresh and lively discussion is under way on the California wine scene. It centers on Napa Valley, specifically on what its most prominent style of wine – Cabernet Sauvignon – represents: Place or personality?
Karen MacNeil, one of the state’s more prolific, experienced, insightful and influential wine writers, kicked off the debate by recently attending a tasting of dear Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons.
“All of these wineries employ the consultant Philippe Melka. All of these wineries make plush, soft, well-structured, very expensive Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. Is it a problem if many of them taste largely the same?,” she posted.
It is for her. That’s because Napa Valley is partitioned into 16 American Viticultural Areas, each based on the belief that its terroir – soils, elevations, exposures, temperatures and the like – yields wines so distinctive they need to be identified by an appellation more narrowly defined, more special, and more meaningful than the catch-all “Napa Valley.”
What she found at the tasting, however, was depressingly broad stylistic similarity in Cabernet Sauvignon, regardless of where each wine originated. Uniqueness that could be pegged to particular place was missing in action.
“These wines are the antithesis of what wine is supposed to be about,” MacNeil told fellow wine writer W. Blake Gray for a follow-up post at the platform Wine-Searcher. “You think of the Matt Kramer term ‘somewhereness.’ These wines are like nowhereness. They were in a nowhere cloud of similarity. I don’t know why you would spend a fortune on a bit of Napa Valley ground. Half a million dollars an acre. And spend a fortune on consultants to get a wine that tastes like a wine 10 miles away. Greatness begins with distinctiveness,” said MacNeil.
On the other hand, some people joining the debate basically feel that terroir is overblown, that if Napa Valley winemakers are happy and successful creating one monolithic style of Cabernet Sauvignon that resonates with consumers, so be it.
With this ongoing conversation in mind, I looked forward Saturday to a group tasting of mostly older Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignons. I pulled up to the “Dance Hall” of the winery Great Bear Vineyards on the northern outskirts of Davis figuring that this would be an opportunity to see how Cabernet Sauvignons of Spring Mountain and Rutherford and Oakville and other Napa Valley appellations might differ one from the other, or, contrarily, whether they more or less tasted alike.
Just as significantly, I was curious to see how these Cabernets had aged, given that several dated to the 1970s, with the youngest about 20 years old. All were in magnums, enhancing their prospects for graceful aging. And all had been coddled, coming from the cellar of one of Napa Valley’s more revered and influential winery owners, the late Koerner Rombauer, founder of Rombauer Vineyards.
K.R. Rombauer III, the son of Koerner and Sandy Rombauer, who with his sister Sheana continued to oversee Rombauer Vineyards until they sold it to the Gallo family last summer, orchestrated Saturday’s tasting with doctors Christian and Catherine Renaudin. Catherine Renaudin was the catalyst for their friendship when as a veterinarian with Equine Reproduction Service at the University of California, Davis, she cared for a horse – Amanda – owned by the Rombauers.
For Christian Renaudin, who moderated the program, the intent of the tasting was threefold: To provide guests with a rich range of wines with numerous reference points to heighten understanding and appreciation of wine’s kaleidoscope of aromas, flavors, textures and the line; to provide guests with an opportunity to see how wines evolve with two or three or more decades of age; and to provide guests with a chance to get excited about truly old, rare and historic wines.
In introducing the wines, K.R. Rombauer said they had been purchased by his father, typically at charity auctions. They constituted a small portion of the 13,000 cases that his parents had stashed in their home cellar. “Enjoy our friends wherever they are in their life cycles,” said Rombauer of the wines as he urged participants to keep an open and accepting mind as they strolled about the magnums.
The tasting was divided into two three-hour sessions of around 40 guests each, the first involving friends and acquaintances of the Renaudins, about half from the wine trade, half wine enthusiasts. The second half was handed off to students and faculty members from the department of viticulture and enology at UC Davis. Some 40 magnums were arranged in no particular order on tables along three sides of the hall, a converted workshop. Participants helped themselves, jotting notes and scoring each wine on a scale of one to 10, 10 being “exceptional.”
As an exercise to see how Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon varies in character from one sub-appellation to another, the tasting was a bust. Of the 22 Cabernets in the lineup, just eight were designated by sub-appellation. Most of the wines bore the simple and wide “Napa Valley” as their appellation, with little or no clue to the specific source of their grapes. When most of these wines were made, the notion of sub-appellations was just in its infancy, with little understanding of how differences in terroir would affect the nature of the wines.
For that matter, the defining of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon by sub-appellation still is in its infancy, with winemakers and wine enthusiasts alike groping to prescribe consistently just how Coombsville Cabernet Sauvignon differs from Oakville Cabernet Sauvignon, and so on. Parsing styles of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon by sub-appellation could be the subject of a dissertation by one of those UC Davis students at the tasting. Or as a university course, the topic could occupy an entire semester for sensory-science students on campus.
That said, three of my higher scoring wines were from the Napa Valley sub-appellation Mount Veeder, high in the Mayacamas Mountains along the valley’s west edge, not far from San Pablo Bay, accounting for its standing as Napa’s coolest appellation. What they shared in common that could speak to a specific Mount Veeder style was force combined with finesse, a seamless integration of fruit, oak, and acidity, tannins that while perhaps formidable in the youth of the wines had been bent into compliance after about two decades against the walls of barrel and bottle. Two of the three stood apart from most of the other Cabernets in the room by their pronounced threads of eucalyptus, a trait of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon that especially tickles me, though not often found.
One of those eucalyptus-scored Cabernets was the 2006 Robert Craig, the other the 2004 Cuvaison. While the third Cabernet from Mount Veeder didn’t show an herbal side, being more suggestive of spring strawberries and cherries, it was one of the more compelling wines of the day for its combination of mass and manners, animated fruit, subtle suggestions of smoke and chocolate, and its endurance. It was the 2008 Mithra.
In a blind tasting of Cabernet Sauvignons from other higher elevation Napa Valley districts could I pinpoint the ones from Mount Veeder? I doubt it, though the herbal accents indicative of Mount Veeder could be a give-away. In the solid structures and concentrated fruit of Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley’s more mountainous realms, however, they all well may be similar.
As to the day’s other question – how have they aged? – the wines pretty much showed that Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon has the DNA, regardless of
where its grapes are grown, to evolve into wines strikingly fresh, true to character, alluringly nuanced and persistent in their expression of time and place, however broad that place may be, and however old the wine may be. Only a few of the wines were ready to be poured on the compost heap, their better days long gone, their fruit thin, their complexity a halting whisper. The color of many was tinged with amber and orange, suggesting they were well into their sunset years, yet nonetheless agile and loquacious.
My other favorites were the 2000 Anderson’s Conn Valley Vineyards Estate Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, which despite its light color and slim build was vivid with its clinging suggestions of cherries and olives; the 1995 Vineyard 29, which at nearly 30 years old remains as precocious as an athletic teenager, all boundless energy, assertive earthiness, and unpredictable complexity (where did those Indian spices come from?); the 1980 Chateau Montelena, which remained deeply and brightly colored, fresh in its invitingly fruity aroma, and exquisitely complex in flavor; and the 1999 Sullivan Vineyard, a lyrical study of sunny fruit, but with a core of entrancing eucalyptus.
Early in my rounds about the tables I grabbed the 1994 Corison Winery Cabernet Sauvignon, recalling that in a blind tasting several years ago another Corison Cab didn’t show well, much to the bafflement of participants aware of the winery’s high standing for Cabernets of authority and grace. The 1994 also initially was a letdown, coming off tight and austere. Two hours later, I returned to the Corison, and this time found it gloriously open, its dazzling fruit and suggestions of olive underscored with an earthiness more dust that bedrock. It was all about elegance and perseverance, a wine to contemplate reverently rather than quaff heedlessly. Lesson learned: Give Corison Cabernets time to come around, or decant at the outset, which this one hadn’t been.
Not all participants cast ballots, but among the nearly 20 who did during the first half of the tasting, the overall favorite Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon was the fresh, focused and forthright 1980 Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars, especially notable for its still revitalizing acidity and shavings of cedar. The runnerup was the 2003 Rombauer, whose enveloping cherry/berry fruit also was punctuated with notes of cedar.
Not all of Saturday’s wines were Cabernet Sauvignon. Others, also in magnum, included the 2003 Pine Ridge Vineyards Napa Valley Crimson Creek Merlot, one of the more refreshing wines of the day thanks to its sharp acidity and cooling suggestion of mint; the 1997 Turley Cellars Lodi Dogtown Vineyard Zinfandel, exceptionally fragrant, exceptionally mouth-filling, exceptionally plump with suggestions of fully ripe boysenberries, exceptionally long in finish, and exceptionally high in alcohol – 15.3 percent; the 1979 Sutter Home Amador County Zinfandel, which with its rich blackberry flavor, slight notes of raisin, and husky conformation showed why the appellation is so recognized for bravo interpretations of the variety, even when its alcohol is a mere 13 percent, as it was here; and The Christian Brothers 1981 Napa Valley Zinfandel Port, which the order’s Brother Timothy Diener had selected to commemorate his 50th year as a California winemaker. Purchased by Koerner Rombauer at the 1985 Napa Valley Wine Auction, the wine is a veritable bowl of dark fruits and assorted nuts, all cohesive, bracing and silken.
A couple of other wines deserve recognition not only for their quality but for their back stories. One was the Rombauer 1985 Napa Valley Chardonnay. So intensely amber in color you expect to find in the bottom of the glass some sort of fossilized organism, the wine nevertheless was frisky with fruit, haunting with butterscotch, and delightfully incessant; think fine old Chablis. It’s a style of Chardonnay that the Rombauers veered from five years later when they began to release a more monumental take on the variety, plumped up with ripe fruit and sweetened with oak. That style became immensely popular and has been emulated by other producers throughout the state ever since.
Another was the Silver Oak Cellars 1986 Napa Valley Bonny’s Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon, decanted from a three-liter bottle that had been signed by Silver Oak winemaker Justin Meyer and given Koerner Rombauer for his 62nd birthday. The wine got my only instantaneous “10” of the day for its amazing clarity in both appearance and flavor. It was vigorous and harmonious, its beckoning fruit shot through with suggestions of finely tooled leather and a scattering of eucalyptus leaves.
In conclusion, K.R. Rombauer summed up a traditional if often overlooked axiom of the wine culture: “This is what wine is supposed to be about – sharing.”
And learning, even if at the end of the lesson no solid conclusion could be drawn about how Mount Veeder Cabernet Sauvignons differ in expression from Cabernets from Howell Mountain, from Stag’s Leap, from Oakville….
To learn where copies of my book “The Signature Wines of Superior California: 50 Wines that Define the Sierra Foothills, the Delta, Yolo and Lodi” can be found, please visit my website SignatureWines.us.