By: Ryan Tedder
Another day another fantastic bottle of wine… As much as I would love to say that I am so sommy cool that I only drink Gruner Veltliner and Cab Franc from Chinon, I will admit that I outright love great Napa Cab made by great winemakers, especially in great vintages. We had a nice little triumvirate of classy Napa Cabs that were short on production but long on quality and power. With Napa making wines like these why would you need to drink from elsewhere if your wine experience is not about the journey but rather the destination.
We started with a house favorite nouveau in the 2007 Jack Quinn Agave Rose Vineyard Cabernet. Sometimes our strength in finding great wines like this one is in maintaining excellent relationships with great wine people. We get the call when special back vintages of great wines come in stock. We did a small email offer on this wine a week or so ago. If you did not reply to grab some-you should have! This tiny 1 acre vineyard in the heart of Rutherford is turning out ridiculously rich, smooth, sweetly fruited supple wines with lip-smaking tannins, rose and violet floral tones and loads of toasty, chocolatey and sweet spice flavored French oak. The people that run the winery must already be rich because this wine tastes like it could cost twice as much. With production being less than 200 cases, grab it while you can. This is stunning Rutherford juice!
Next one of my favorite young wine drinkers came in with some friends and we managed to pull the cork out of a bottle of 2010 Tusk Cabernet. If you are not familiar this is Philippe Melka’s mack daddy Cab from a blend of some of the best benchland and mountain vineyards in Napa. The yields are kept extremely low, 100% new French oak is lavished on this lovely Cab and the production is a scant 150 cases. As they say, Tusk is more of a lifestyle than a bottle of wine. I honestly think this will double in price as more people learn about the excellence that is Tusk. It really was an orchestra of flavors whose interplay was thrilling. This is massive yet elegant, showing finesse and amplitude, with rich dark berry, plum, prune and black licorice notes powering gracefully through the palate. Finishes with a delightful interplay of flavors. Bravo!
We finished the lovely evening with one of the best plots of Cabernet in the whole of California. From the oft panned 1998 vintage, we drank a bottle of 1998 Colgin Herb Lamb Cabernet. Year in and year out the remarkable signature of jazzy dark raspberry fruit, creamy, choco oak, dry dill and sweet tobacco speaks through the Herb Lamb vineyard. It is a shame that this wine does not get made anymore. We have recently sampled the 93, 94 and 95 vintages of this gem. The only difference was the lack of gobby sweet tannins and the extract level was a touch low. The wine remained extremely classy and refined nonetheless. I could drink this wine in different vintages for the rest of my life-simply outstanding!!!