Single Vineyard Napa Cabernets
Think you can pick out a Pauillac from a Margaux blind? It’s hard. Most people who think experts should be able to do it, have never tried to do it. Now perform that feat with wines from Napa Valley!
At least three wineries are making Cabernet Sauvignon wines separately from a variety of Napa Valley vineyards in order to illustrate the concept of terroir. It’s an interesting effort, and success or failure will be replete with commentary on the American marketplace. Heretofore it has been Europeans who firmly believed a wine should express the place where it was grown. Hence the role of the winemaker was akin to that of a baby sitter: keep the wine safe, but otherwise get out of the way and let it develop on its own. By contrast Americans put their faith in the artistry of the winemaker, expecting grapes (usually of the same varietal) to be adroitly blended from several different districts in order to achieve a result better than the sum of its parts. Kendall-Jackson Chardonnay would be one huge success story dating from the 1980’s built on that blending model.
California winemakers love to talk about terroir, and they can demonstrate it in their cellar by letting you taste from different fermentation lots residing in barrel. But, at the end of the day, the sales department at most wineries demands all those lots get blended into one or two final products (usually a high-end assemblage, and then maybe a second-string item) for ease of understanding in the marketplace. Retail store consumers just can’t keep track of eight different Cabernets from each winery. Understandable. Of just such minutiae are annoying cork dorks made.
Nevertheless some wineries are giving terroir a go in Napa Valley. Conn Creek makes a separate Cab from each of the 14 named AVAs in Napa each year, and then bottles a selection (say five) of them separately for sale at the winery (around $45 per bottle). Atlas Peak does separate wines from four different mountainside AVAs in Napa each year (around $85 per bottle). The most expensive, and extensive, offering comes from Nickel & Nickel. They bottle 13 separate Cabs ($90 a bottle and up), along with different Chardonnays, Zins, Syrahs, and Merlots. The most aggressive part of the program is that they make most of the wines available for sale through the three-tiered distribution system. I’m guessing this drives their distributor salesmen in Florida absolutely nuts.
I tasted a group of the 2006 Nickel & Nickel Cabs at the winery a couple weeks ago. It is an entertaining experience. Witz End Vyd is on the Rutherford Bench tucked up against the western hills. It makes an instructive comparison with C.C. Ranch Vyd across the valley near the Silverado Trail. Witz End shows a plummy fruit, but also some interwoven green notes and a pronounced acidity. C.C. Ranch is a bigger wine with lots of extract; one can almost visualize thicker skins. Another noteworthy comparison is along a north – south line through the valley. Regusci Vyd in Stags Leap has a smooth and supple texture, with strong cherry aromatics. Sullenger Vyd, which is right at the winery next to the river in Rutherford, is harder and darker, almost brooding. Dragon Fly Vyd is in a little ravine west of St. Helena. Somewhat surprisingly the Dragon Fly is lighter-bodied than the Sullenger, but very tightly knit and complex in the finish.
Terroir is not just soil. It also reflects micro-climate and viticultural practices. So it is not an easy matter to assign a causative mechanism to each and every flavor nuance one finds in a single vineyard wine. Fun to try though.
Tags: Cab Sauv, California, current release wines
Categories:
Wine Trivia
