The Wine's the Thing
Mitch Kornfeld
3/21

King Cab, Part III -- California

Cabernet Sauvignon is the king of California red wines. Period. By extension it's the king of all California wines. It's the state's most widely planted red variety and it's the only California wine that in the popular imagination really competes with the classics of Europe, the Bordeaux, Burgundies, and Barolos. It has become a well known category of wine recognized the world over. Let's start by taking a look how this came about.

Cabernet Sauvignon and the traditional European wine grapes started arriving on the West Coast in the 1850's during California's first decade of statehood. Some of the pioneers in California winemaking, whose names are still on some labels, made cabernets in the second half of the 19th Century. They were names like Paul Masson, Charles Krug, and Gustave Niebaum, who founded Inglenook. As the 20th century arrived so did Georges de Latour, the founder of Bieulieu Vineyards (BV), His name has been gracing their flagship reserve cabernet since 1937. After him came Louis Martini Sr. For most of the 20th Century the cabernets of Inglenook, BV, and Martini were recognized as California's finest (and most expensive).

The 1960's saw the beginning of a wine boom in California that has never really ended, and it was then that single vineyard wines began to gain prominence, led by Ridge and the late Joe Heitz. These days two big names who are still around and who have their names on labels are Robert Mondavi and Joseph Phelps.

There really wasn't all that much cabernet planted in California until the boom of the 1960's. The people responsible for the new plantings knew that cabernet was the variety principally responsible for the best and most famous wines of Bordeaux, and they also knew that it was regarded as California's best variety from its track record with Inglenook, BV, and Martini, (all in the Napa Valley) and some others, such as Krug (in Napa), Sebastiani, and Simi (both in Sonoma). The new plantings produced wines that were, again, recognized as California's finest and that led to more plantings and a cycle that continues unabated. By 1999, the last year figures are available as they say, there were over 62,00 acres of Cabernet Sauvignon in California. That's over 25,000 Hectares, for those metrically inclined, and any way you look at it, there are enough vines to produce about 150 million bottles of California Cabernet Sauvignon every year. Though I do my share there must be an awful lot of people out there buying and drinking, and certainly enjoying, all of that Cabernet Sauvignon.

As I said in part one of this series, you could wear out your thesaurus in describing good Cabernet Sauvignon and California is certainly the place to find it. The flavor descriptors most often seen include currant, black cherries, pepper, chocolate, and cedar, and also showing up have been: black fruits, red fruits, mint, eucalyptus, sage, leather, minerals, meat, game, olives, dill, herbs, Asian spices, vanilla, tobacco, tar, I'm sure there must be a few more I've forgotten about, and the ever popular cigar boxes, whatever they smell or taste like. In addition to that range of flavors what really sets California cabernet apart from most other wines is its size. If you ever wondered what is meant when you see a reference to a "big" wine just try a good California cabernet and you'll soon know what they mean. A youthful cabernet will be concentrated, tannic, dark to almost the point of inkiness, and may be so rich it even feels thick. It will have tremendous flavor and deep fruit. In it's youth the fruit will be at least partially hidden by tannins. After aging for a few years the tannins begin to melt away and the wine will begin to smooth out but will still bring its concentrated fruit flavors to your palate. As it ages it develops bottle bouquet and more complexity. Those concentrated flavors will yield the proverbial long lingering aftertaste too.

The big flavors have to do with the inherent nature of the variety, that is its genes, and its quality of being a shy-bearing variety (remember the inverse relationship between quantity and quality). Other factors come into play too, such as the soil, or older vines, and/or hillside vines that will have lower than average yields, but what makes Cabernet Sauvignon in California so special is the California climate. In California it basically doesn't rain in the summer. In 1997 I was in the northern California wine country in August and experienced one day of a good soaking rain. There was maybe one inch (2.5cm) of accumulation, nothing unusual here in New York, but it was front page news in California complete with worries about the upcoming harvest (which turned out to be superlative). Grapes enjoy a long sunny growing season in California. Even a late-ripening variety like Cabernet Sauvignon achieves full ripeness almost every year. They have their off years in California, but it's usually so sunny they don't have really poor years and haven't really had one since 1972. (All their modern technology has been known to help too.) All that sunshine makes for ripe potent fruit, the hallmark of California wines. When you take a champion like Cabernet Sauvignon, get it in the temperature zone it likes, in that sunny California environment, you get a powerhouse of a wine that is as formidable and compelling as any wine in the world.

Good cabernet can come from many different parts of the state. Recently I had a very good one from Nevada County, which is located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains (Indian Springs Winery, 1994). Sonoma County, which for my money is one of the best wine regions in the world, produces excellent cabernet, but the very best of California Cabernet Sauvignons come from the Napa Valley. Within Napa Valley there are sub-divisions somewhat similar to the communes found in Bordeaux. In the U.S. we loosely use the French term "Appellations," to describe them. Presently some are official Appellations (technically called American Viticultural Areas or AVA's), and some are not. Chances are that in about another decade the entire valley will be neatly divided into Appellations. For now the subdivisions really aren't that important, but if you see one (Stag's Leap District for example) it's a good thing. All but the coolest parts of Napa are good for cabernet, and your basic $25 to $35 bottle of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon is not going to be coming from an unsuitable place for the variety. Read the back labels to look for special attributes such as old vines or hillside vines. Naturally a single vineyard designation is a good thing too.

The name Carneros, or Carneros District is a hot one on Napa labels (and on Sonoma labels too, as it straddles both counties), but its fame is based on varieties that like things a bit cooler than cabernet (i.e. Pinot Noir and Chardonnay). If all the stars line up, that is to say you like the winery, the year is good, the alcohol is over 13%, which is a sign of good ripeness, and the price is right, by all means try a bottle if you feel so inclined. I just don't recommend investing in cases of Carneros cabernet.

Some of the very best Napa cabernets come from a place that is not a district at all, though it will prominently appear on many back labels. It's called "The Rutherford Bench." These benchlands, just above the town of Rutherford in the middle of the valley are supposed to be an obvious physical feature of Napa, but as near as I can tell they would only be obvious to a trained geologist. However, there is one place where you can get a good view of the Rutherford Bench and that's at Franciscan Vineyards. Try to get a parking spot in the front row of the parking lot in front of the winery for the best view. Franciscan is well worth visiting for their wines too. While not in the top echelon of California wineries they make excellent wines and charge very reasonable prices. They have always been one of my favorite wineries for value and they are well worth getting to know.

A recent trend in California Cabernet Sauvignon, if you want to call the last quarter century recent, is blending. Before the 1970's 100% cabernets were the rule but now they're the exceptions, though they are certainly out there. The idea behind blending is to make a wine with greater complexity. In this the Californians are emulating the wines of Bordeaux. As in Bordeaux, they say that they are trying to make the best wine possible. To me that's a definite maybe. I think that anything that's about 85% or 90% or more Cabernet Sauvignon should be called a Cabernet Sauvignon (which is not as dumb as it sounds as you will soon hopefully see) and anything with a lower percentage than that really becomes another category.

By law in California a wine with 75% or more of Cabernet Sauvignon is entitled to use the varietal name. There are a surprising number of 76/24 blends out there, as the name Cabernet Sauvignon is a good one to have on a label. Below the 75% threshold that other category does exist. It's called a "Meritage" wine. It rhymes with heritage, though a lot of people seem think it's a French word (it's not, it's made-up) and give it that ahzge sound. Meritage wines are most often made from the "big three" red Bordeaux varieties -- Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc -- and you'll see them listed, almost always in that order, on back labels as well as on some front ones. Some wineries will use all five of the red Bordeaux varieties, adding Malbec and Petit Verdot in small amounts. Sometimes the fact that the wine is a blend of Bordeaux varieties is reflected in the name of the wine, so you'll come across bottles with names such as Flora Springs Trilogy, Cain Five, and Chateau St. Jean Cinq Cépages, fine wines all. You have to read the labels of Meritage wines to find the exact percentages of varieties used. You'll be getting wines with the same percentages used in Bordeaux. The California wineries almost always tell you the percentages used whereas the Bordelais almost always do not.

If the percentage of cabernet in a Meritage is up towards the 75% mark your wine will taste mostly like a cabernet. And this is one way to see what cabernet tastes like without having to wait a few years for your wine to be ready to drink. The wineries say the main idea behind Meritage wines is to make the best wine possible but one side effect of blending in the other Bordeaux varieties is that with the exception of Petit Verdot, which is used in small amounts when it is used at all, all the other varieties are softer than Cabernet Sauvignon and the resulting wine is softer and ready to drink much earlier than a full fledged Cabernet Sauvignon.

The late comedian, presidential candidate, and winery owner Pat Paulsen, once pointed out that the average American drank a little over two gallons of wine a year while the average Frenchman drank over twenty (about 10l. vs. 100l.). This, he said, "proved that France has no Midwest." What the Californians were doing with the Meritage wines was taking their best wine, Cabernet Sauvignon, and making it more accessible, making it a wine you could buy off the shelf on the way home from work and serve at dinner that night. That's a great way to get those per capita figures up. I've tasted excellent Meritages but I'm something of a traditionalist. If you're going to blend Cabernet Sauvignon for more complexity I think that 92-2-2-2-2 would be a good place to start, rather than say, 60-30-10. At least the Californians had the honesty to call those 60-30-10's something else besides Cabernet Sauvignon.

If you're interested in trying a Meritage, Estancia makes a good one that you can find in the low $20's. The Cain Cuvée of Cabernet Sauvignon is a nice wine. It sells for around $22 to $24. Some really good ones, all in the $40 to $45 range include BV Tapestry Reserve, Conn Creek Anthology, and Justin Isosceles. The Cain Five has crept up to about $65 a bottle, and the Chateau St. Jean Cinq Cépages (which is actually a Cabernet Sauvignon) is now about $45 a bottle. The 1995 had the good fortune, or misfortune depending on how you look at it, to be the Wine Spectator's Wine of The Year in 1998. (WOTY is based on quality, price, and availability, not just on raw quality.) The '95 was $25 a bottle but after winning the prestigious WOTY the laws of supply and demand kicked in. As I always say, when it comes to buying wine, supply and demand is a law to be avoided as much as possible, when the supply is limited and the demand high, of course.

California cabernets are very good agers but as a rule they cannot age as long as their counterparts from Bordeaux. One of the things needed for aging ability is acidity and generally the California heat and sunshine, while causing ripeness and flavor to go up, causes acidity to go down. One could also state that conversely the coolness in Bordeaux makes for longer lived but less fruity wines there. For the mostly mid-priced cabernets I acquire I like to wait until they're six years old before I drink them. By then they've lost their puckery youthful tannins and have begun to evolve into something special. Eight to ten years old seems to be about perfect, but if you prefer your wines to be youthful you can open them when they're four or five, and if you like mature wines you can take them to about twelve years out. The oldest California cabernet I had was about 19½ years old, a Dunn Vineyards 1980 Howell Mountain that I opened in honor of the calendar change. It was produced from low yielding hillside vines and could have held on until 25 though it was definitely mature. (It was an excellent wine, very deep but not complex enough to be truly outstanding. Maybe it was because 1980 was merely a very good year and not a great one.)

In California, as well as any wine district, cabernets from lesser years are more approachable in their youth than wines from really good years. The currently available 1998 vintage is a little on the lighter side. It is considered to be the most inconsistent vintage of the '90's, but it was still a good year. (The 1990's really represented an extraordinary run of quality in California.) Trying the '98's from less expensive and not built to last offerings would be another way to learn what California cabernet tastes like. 

Recently I tasted a 1998 from Jekel Vineyards that was surprisingly drinkable. It didn't have much tannin and tasted very good, quite a nice wine. Having tasted and drank a few other wines just before trying it undoubtedly helped. Of course having food around helped too. A tannic cabernet can stand up and cut through just about anything. In other words you can get away with a young cabernet if you pair it with rich food. Beef and lamb are the classic accompaniments but I haven't had either of them in so long I can't give you an honest recommendation on that, but it has got to be one of those "50 million Frenchmen can't be wrong" type of things. If you're looking to cut down on fat, calories, and cholesterol, buffalo (bison technically) is supposed to be good, and I can tell you that ostrich tastes amazingly like beef. Anything with tomato sauce works fine. Vegetarian chili is always a good choice, and spicy upscale Mexican food is a real winner with big red wines.

Now it's (about) time for recommendations. There are literally hundreds of California Cabernet Sauvignons and I'm not going to try to list them all. The list(s) will get to be lengthy and there will be something for everyone. I haven't tried all of the wines, and for the really expensive ones I probably never will, but after reading from many sources, one can tell who's making the good stuff. (You don't actually have to taste a Chateau Lafite-Rothschild or a Chateau Petrus to know it's good.) If I miss a favorite of yours don't worry about it. I have to take availability into account and I find I'm biased in favor of value. I'm going to be leaving out some producers like Gallo. Maybe I'm just biased from all those years when they were putting out oceans of ordinaire, but now that they've jumped into fine wine in a big way (and offer undeniable value) I still find I buy the wines of the high quality minded producers who got us to where we are today.

In the lower price ranges, up to $15 a bottle try Estancia, Fetzer, Kendall-Jackson, J. Lohr, Monterrey Vineyard, Napa Ridge, Parducci, and St. Francis.

Next up are the mid-prices ranges from about $15 to about $50. This is where you can find really excellent wines without shelling out a small fortune. Again I'm not trying to give a comprehensive listing and I will mention a few wineries that make regulars and Reserves (as most of them do) where the Reserves, which are produced in smaller quantities, go over the $50 mark. Prices are, um, fluid, and vary from place to place and from time to time. Try to lay away what remaining 1997's you might find. It was a great vintage. (1996 was excellent too.)

Mid-priced cabernets: Ahlgren, Alexander Valley Vineyards, Arrowood, Artesa, Beaulieu (BV), Beringer (in Napa Valley, not to be confused with) Benzinger (in Sonoma), Burgess, Buehler, Cakebread, Chappelet, Chateau Souverain, Chateau St. Jean, Chimney Rock, Chateau Montelena Calistoga Cuvée, Clos Du Bois Marlstone, Clos Du Val, B.R. Cohn, Dehlinger, Eberle, Elyse, Fife, Franciscan, Freemark Abbey, Flora Springs, Frog's Leap, Guenoc, Gundlach-Bundschu, Heitz, The Hess Collection, Husch, Jekel, Johnson, Justin, Kenwood, Kunde, Laurel Glen, Liparita, Markham, Robert Mondavi (not the Woodbridge), Monticello, Murphy-Goode, Optima, Joseph Phelps, Pine Ridge, Plumpjack, Siverado Vineyards, Sonoma Creek, St. Clement, Rabbit Ridge, Ravenswood, Raymond, Rutherford Hill, Sequoia Grove, Simi, Stonegate, Sterling, and Trefethen,

Here are a few wineries with offerings that start in the high $40's and get up to about the $100 range. This is where my middle class origins (not that I have moved up) betray me, as I rarely buy any of these, though I have imbibed from time to time. If you come across them at tastings skip some of the white wines and make sure to try them. If you're visiting one of the wineries by all means taste them if you can, even if they charge you five or seven dollars for a glass (usually refundable with purchase).

High priced cabernets: Beringer-Private Reserve and single vineyard bottlings, BV Georges de Latour Private Reserve, Caymus, Cornerstone, Cosentino, Dunn, Duckhorn, Fisher, Grgich Hills, La Jota, Lewis, Palhmeyer, Shafer, Silver Oak, Spring Mountain, Stag's Leap Wine Cellars (not to be confused with the smaller Stags' Leap Winery though they are also very good), Viader, and Whitehall Lane.

Next up come the really expensive cabs. There is probably an official industry name for this category and I might have heard it but it's the kind of thing I tune right out. I live in a country where it's just about impossible to find something labeled as "small," where we start at medium, and extra-large is just about right. They probably call this category "super-ultra-premium" or something stupid like that. I don't really know. "Boutique Winery" was taken quite a while ago, and you've just read through a bunch of them. The Bordelais have their garage wines, so that's taken. I might have to fall back on some Mel Brooks nomenclature because the prices are so high, but that might sound disrespectful, as these are some of the finest wines in the world bar none. On the other hand, for the price of a bottle or two of them you could get a case of something very nice. These are mostly single vineyard wines so I'll use the whole (long) names. The prices, and they all start at $100, will be the numbers in parentheses. Keep in mind that the price quoted is at release and the price goes up on the auction market just as they do for classified Bordeaux.

Ridiculously high priced cabernets: Araujo (125), Bryant Family (150), BV Rutherford Clone 4 Winemaker's Selection and Clone 6 (125), Caymus Special Selection (125), Chateau Montelena - The Montelena Estate (125), Colgin - Herb Lamb Vineyard (135), Flora Springs 20th Anniversary 1997 (300), Grace Family (395), Harlan Estate (225), Opus One (140), Ridge Monte Bello (120), Screaming Eagle (125), Signorello- Padrone Première Cuvée (125), and Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cask 23 (125).

Some astute readers will no doubt notice that a few big names such as Dominus Estate and the Della Valle Maya are omitted. That's because they are Meritage wines. These wines are over $100 a bottle and I think it just goes to show how good Cabernet Sauvignon is because we tend to group these wines in our minds (I know I do) with the cabernets. Ridiculously high priced Meritages is a topic for another day, if my middle class values allow me to write that column, which I rather doubt. Next week we go around the hemispheres for more good old Cabernet Sauvignon

© Mitch Kornfeld 2001 All rights reserved

Send your comments or questions to...
mitchk@unionsquarejournal.com

Previously by Mitch Kornfeld...

King Cab, Part II -- Bordeaux (03/07/01)

King Cab, Part I -- Some Basics (02/27/01)

For a Big Red, Think Petite (02/18/02)

Tannic Monsters from the ID (02/08/01)

New York Wine and Restaurant Deals (01/30/01)

Dad's Cardinal Zins and Other Clichés (01/20/01)

Some Basics for a Winter's Eve (01/12/01)

And if They're Spanish That's Fine (01/05/01)

Hello Carbon Dioxide (12/29/00)

Wines for Christmas (12/22/00)

Nouveau Beaujolais, Etc. (11/24/00)

Going to a Tasting 101 (12/01/00)