The Awesome Current & Upcoming Napa Valley Wines

by Dan Williams

For me, February is the best time to visit Napa Valley. Sure, the weather would be better if I went it June, when it gets warm without being super hot... but you just can’t beat Napa in February. And why is that? Because the entire valley parties for 4 days straight for an event called Premiere Napa Valley!

Premiere Napa Valley is a trade-only auction where over 200 of the wineries in the Napa Valley gather together and auction off one-of-a-kind wines. These are wines that the wineries don’t normally produce, and these wines are crafted to be the best examples of the wineries’ capabilities. Quite often, they bottle just a few cases of their favorite barrel of Cabernet, from their favorite vineyard block, that typically goes into their reserve wine. They produce anywhere from 5 to 20 cases, and if a member of the trade, like Hi-Time, wins a particular winery’s auction lot, all of that wine would go to Hi-Time. So we’re talking about super micro-production wines that are simply stunning!

Another benefit of this auction is the fact that most of these wines are barrel samples. In this year’s case, the majority of the 200+ wines were from the 2014 vintage. So we get a chance to taste over 200 wines from producers up and down the valley. This gives us the ability to let YOU, our loyal customers, know if the vintage one or two years down the road is a vintage you avoid, or max out your cards for the next “vintage of a lifetime”! No, but seriously, don’t max out your cards... be responsible.

In addition to the auction, wineries get together and throw parties all week long. They have big spreads of food, and pour all of their current releases, as well as older vintages pulled from their libraries and barrel samples of upcoming vintages. Imagine spending several days tasting wines from some of the best producers in Napa Valley, such as Shafer, Ovid, Continuum, Pulido-Walker, Memento Mori, Far Niente. Yeah... now you know why February is my favorite time to go to Napa.

In regards to Cabernet Sauvignon, since Cab is king in Napa, here is my take on the current and upcoming vintages.

2012 – Delicious wines from a vintage that’s hard to pass up.

As I stated last year, there was no drastic news about this vintage. Mother nature played nice; there weren’t scorching hot spells just before harvest, no upcoming rains that rushed picking, no problems during the flowering and bloom in the spring to mess yields. There was no news. This meant that wineries could pick grapes when they wanted, when grapes were at optimum maturity, with optimum flavors.

The resulting 2012 Cabernets are complex wines with good aromatics, generous fruit profiles that seem to lean more along the red fruit spectrum (think cherries, raspberries, and currants), and integrated tannins. The majority of 2012s I have tasted are drinking very well right now, but should be able to cellar until an age of 10-20 years. They have put on more weight since last year, but I take that to mean that they may have more to show in the future. The only sad thing about the 2012s is that many of them are now sold out.

2013 – BUY THIS VINTAGE!!!

“During my Napa trip in February, I think the worst wine from the 2013 vintage I tasted was really, really good...that was the worst wine.” That’s what I wrote last year. Well this year, I tasted more from the 2013 vintage, and again nothing tasted less than really, really good!

I still feel that this is the greatest vintage of Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon since I have been in the wine game, which was when the fantastic 1994s were being released. The 2013s represent everything you want in a Cabernet Sauvignon. They have opulent fruit (perhaps more along the black fruit spectrum like plums, black cherries, cassis) with wonderful aromatics, good structure in the way of fresh acidities and firm tannins, along with expansive and long-lasting finishes. Seriously... some of the finishes on these wines lasted well over a minute, with a few lasting 2-3 minutes... INCREDIBLE! This is a vintage that is going to be hard to top. I’m typically not fond when critics so loosely use the term “vintage of your lifetime”, but if I was going to use it... it might be for the 2013s.

2014 – This makes it 3 in a row...potentially.

2014 marks the 3rd vintage in a row where quality was high. Since last year, winemakers were beginning to speak proudly about their 2014 finished wines, and how they believed they were just as good as the 2012s. After tasting so many of them out of barrel, I feel that 2014 is another very good vintage. How good, though, is hard to tell. The wines were not shy on fruit, complexity, or nuance, but they are currently showing some hard tannins that overshadowed much of that the wines may have had to offer.

As of now, I feel this is a vintage that has the tannin of the 2006 vintage with the fruit of 2004. So, in essence, the real question here is going to be the tannins and how they integrate into the wines over the coming year. If they integrate, then this could, in fact, be just as good as 2012. Right now I’m calling the hierarchy of these vintages, starting with the best, as 2013, then 2012, followed by 2014.

Noteworthy Upcoming Releases

The majority of the Napa Valley Cabernets that coming out are from the glorious 2013 vintage. Below are some wines that should land in our store in the not too distant future. They are not listed in any particular order.

Memento Morii 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon – For the past few years, if this was not my number 1 wine of the trip, then it was still in the top 5! Adam, Adriel, Hayes, and winemaker Sam Kaplan are doing everything right, and everybody in the valley wants to drink this wine! They get fruit from some of the best vineyards in Napa, including Cabernet from a few of the Beckstoffer vineyards! Ripe, juicy black fruits with minerals and crème de cassis. This earned 97 points from Robert Parker.

Continuum 2013 Proprietary Red – This marks the first vintage for Tim Mondavi and his family where this wine is 100% estate grown, produced, and bottled. Dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon from their Pritchard Hill vineyard in the eastern mountains of the Napa Valley, this wine also has a good percentage of Cabernet Franc in the blend. When this was the case in older Opus One and Mondavi Reserve Cabernets, those were the vintages that always aged the best. This earned 97 points from Antonio Galloni.  [ed. Carlo Mondavi stopped by our store last week to taste us (again!) on the 2013-- one of the top two or three wines Dan had on this trip]

Pine Ridge 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Valley – This wine never ceases to amaze me. It retails at our store for $51.98/bottle, but this easily competes with other Cabernets that sell for $100/bottle… no joke! The forward mix of black and blue fruit are balanced by pronounced yet velvety tannins, making this a wine that drinks well on its own, but I always felt a rib eye steak was this wine’s soul mate!

Pulido-Walker 2013 Cabernet Sauvignon Panek Vineyard – Pulido-Walker has become one of the favorite wines our staff loves to sell, and after one taste you’ll know why! Mark Pulido, Donna Walker, and their winemaker Thomas Brown (who also makes Schrader and Rivers-Marie, among others), make this wine from the Panek Vineyard in St. Helena, a vineyard that is littered with rocks that help the vines' good water drainage, smaller berries, complex flavors, intense aromatics, and distinct texture. To me, this tasted like the quintessential Napa Valley Cabernet! This wine earned 96 points from Robert Parker.

Shafer 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Hillside Select – One of the most revered Cabernet producers in Napa, and their 2012 Hillside Select from the Stags Leap District is my favorite wine they have produced since the prodigious 2002! Silky, plush red fruits mingle with crushed rocks, framboise, black cherries, plums, and hints of cocoa. I could drink the whole bottle by myself! This wine earned 98-100 points from Robert Parker.

Fontanella 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon Mt Veeder – What more can we say about the Fontanella family that we haven’t already said! Jeff and Karen are two of the nicest people in the valley, and the wines they produce are knockouts! Sourced from the western mountains of the Napa area, Mt Veeder is known to produce grapes with intense flavors and nuance. Their 2012 Cabernet is just hitting our sales floor, and it is riddled with cherry, raspberry, plums, black currants, herbs, spice, velvety tannin, and hints of earth, vanilla, and a kiss of oak. The complexity for the money is envied by many, but since Jeff worked at ZD and Opus, you can see how he learned to get the best out of his grapes!

Carlo Mondavi, Continuum, visits Hi-Time

Big thanks to Carlo Mondavi for stopping by the cellar and tasting us on the soon-to-be-released (next week!) 2013 Continuum... Our California wine buyer Dan Williams says this release was '...hands down one of the best two or three wines I tasted on my recent Napa trip." As he was there for the Premiere Napa Valley auction, he was tasting top shelf wines only. And today? An easy two thumbs up. Don't miss this wine!

The California Wine Staff Goes To Napa

By Dan Williams, North American Wine Buyer

During February of each year, hundreds of wineries in the Napa Valley hold a special auction for members of the trade, called Premiere Napa Valley. The wineries auction off special one-of-a-kind bottlings in five, ten, or twenty case lots. These are wines that the wineries don’t sell anywhere else, and they are crafted to be the best expressions of their wines they can possibly make; a Reserve’s Reserve, if you will.

During this week, wineries throw big parties and tastings where they pour these special cuvées along with virtually their entire lineup of wines. Many wineries often pour older vintages from their cellars to showcase the aging potential of their wines. In addition, we have great relationships with many of the owners and winemakers in Napa, so this is a great time to ask about upcoming vintages. This helps us to get you on the “ground floor” for vintages you should buy heavier, and vintages where you should “pump the brakes.”

I don’t know about you, but this sounds like the perfect time to make a trip to Napa Valley! So Zach Korhonen and I jumped in the car before the morning light, and by lunchtime, we were drinking Champagne and Cabernet with some of the best winemakers in the world! Below are some of the highlights from our mid-February trip.

First off, let’s talk about the current and a few upcoming vintages.

2011 – For such a crappy vintage, why are there so many good wines?

I’m not going to lie to you. As a blanket statement, this is probably the toughest vintage for Bordeaux varieties Napa and Sonoma have seen in 20 years! This was a cold, wet, and foggy year that prohibited phenolic maturity and ripeness from occurring in many vineyards, along with widespread rot. Many vintners have quite a way of spinning this vintage, telling us things like, “...this was a tough vintage, but we succeeded in producing elegant and savory wines.”  Quite often, their wines were simply disappointing, showing notes of jalapeno, bell pepper and harsh tannins.

But there were, in fact, some amazing wines. Not just amazing for the vintage, but simply amazing! A few years ago, Zach Korhonen and I were walking with winemaker Sally Johnson through the caves at Pride Mountain Wines on Spring Mountain, tasting barrel samples from the 2011 and 2012 vintage. She poured a sample of the Reserve Claret in my glass, and this wine was an absolute knockout! Ripe, juicy red and black fruits, notes of vanilla, cassis, velvety tannins, and a hint of white pepper. I told her that this was a gorgeous 2012 and her response was, “No, that’s our 2011.”  What?!?!? This woman knows what she’s doing, and for 2011 being such a “crappy vintage,” why does this taste so damn good?!?!? When we moved on to a barrel sample of the 2012, yes, it was better, but I don’t feel there was an extreme difference.

During spring of last year, I was able to attend a trade-only event in Napa Valley’s Oakville district and sample many of the wines from this prestigious region. The winner of that day was Dalla Valle’s 2011 Cabernet Sauvignon. It showcased the ripe black currants, plums, black cherries and pronounced tannins that I have come to love from the hillsides of eastern Oakville. It turns out that there are some successes on the valley floor, but most of the real winners come from hillside and mountaintop vineyards. Places that were above the fog, and were able to get enough sunshine to let grapes rid themselves of those green tasting pyrazines and get some ripeness going.

Great wineries produce great wine, even in the off years. France’s Chateau Margaux doesn’t produce bad wine for their 1^st growth label. In tough years they just bottle less wine so that what does make it into bottle is stellar juice! The same can be said for the top producers in California’s North Coast. So don’t overlook quality producers from this year; you might be doing yourself a disservice.

2012 – Worthy of most of the hype you have heard.

If you were a winemaker, and you made a bad Napa or Sonoma Cabernet in 2012, just give up, because this was such an easy year that you will not be able to make a good Cabernet in any other year! That is a paraphrased statement from many vineyard managers and winemakers in Napa and Sonoma.

There’s typically some news of something rough happening in a given vintage, but not in 2012. In 2012 there weren’t 10 days of triple-digit heat, no heavy rains coming during harvest, no smoke taint. In fact, I don’t even think there were any major frost issues this year. It was sunny, warm, and virtually uneventful, except for much of the fruit coming off the vines at the same time (but that was more of a space issue within the wineries). Winemakers could call the picks as they wanted, getting fruit that was in their respective sweet spots, and winemakers made gorgeous wines showcasing luscious red fruits, nicely placed acidity, velvety tannins, and beautiful aromatics.

So why, earlier, did I say this vintage was worthy of most of the hype? It’s hard to pinpoint, but I think some growers and wineries got greedy. Yields were low for several years, so when the 2012 growing season began, some producers kept yields higher than maybe they should have been. This meant that those producers made wines with short finished, or had great presence up front and on the finish, but was just lacking that “certain something” on the mid-palate. While we were in Napa Valley this past February, this was mentioned by more than one prominent winemaker.

However, there are so many damn amazing wines from the 2012 vintage! This is, by every means, a vintage to buy. As a blanket statement, these are wines that are very drinkable now, and will lie down for a decade or more. The tannins are a bit more velvety than I prefer, but I think that just adds to their charm and their approachability. Even producers that aren’t usually “on my radar” have made wonderful 2012s.

2013 – One of the best vintages I have ever tasted!

During my Napa trip in February, I think the worst wine from the 2013 vintage I tasted was really, really good….that was the worst wine. Now if that’s the case, just think about how good the best wines tasted! Flash back to my Napa trip from last year, and it was as if winemakers were given a script to read. Every time I asked about their 2012s, they stated they were very happy with them, and the 2012 were fantastic wines. But when I asked about their 2013s, they would all cover their mouths, look around, and state that their 2013s were even better! I would ask another winemaker (who, mind you, was not within earshot of the previous conversation), and their statements were similar. This happened almost 10 times during that trip. So as great as the 2012s were, I was already getting giddy for the 2013s over a year ago. Now that I have finally tasted so many of the 2013s, I feel confident in saying that 2013 Cabernets from the top producers may be some of the best Cabernets I have ever tasted out of Napa Valley!

These wines have rich, decadent, intense black fruit flavors, remarkable aromatics, gorgeous purity, amazing mid-palates, amazing structure, pronounced but balanced tannins, and lengthy finishes. Moreover, they have good acidity that gives these ripe, fruit-forward wines the structure to be balanced. These are wines that should be able to age in your cellars until your newborns are “of legal age.”  In fact, it would not surprise me if the top producers made wines that will age 20, 30, even 40 years!

In addition, the Chardonnays I have tasted from this vintage may also be some of the best Chardonnays I’ve ever tasted from this region. I can’t recall the last vintage where the Chardonnays have brought such a smile to my face! Again, the acidity in these wines balance out the richness that can sometimes be overdone from this area.

Some Highlights from the Trip

Morlet

One of our fist stops of the week was to visit the masterful Luc Morlet at his eponymous estate. Luc knows how to craft magnificent wines from many different varietals. From 1996-2000 he made the wines at Newton, where he helped to craft their Unfiltered Chardonnay, a favorite among collectors. He then became the head winemaker for Peter Michael Winery and crafted their wines from the 2001-2005 vintages, where his wines earned up to 99 points! While he does consult for a few other wineries (such as Bure), he focuses most of his time for his own Morlet label. Here, he is making Chardonnays, Pinot Noirs, Syrahs, and Cabernet Sauvignons that are among the most intriguing and nuanced in Napa and Sonoma! His prefers his vineyard sources to be organic, and he uses minimal amounts of sulfites in his wines; he wants to be as “out of the way” as possible. The Morlet wines are not to be missed!

Kata

The Beckstoffer family is known as having one of the best Cabernet Sauvignon vineyards…not only in Napa, but in the world! We are, of course, speaking of Beckstoffer To Kalon Vineyard in Oakville. However, their other vineyards are just as stellar! We met up with David Beckstoffer at the family’s Beckstoffer Bourne vineyard in St. Helena, and tasted a few vintages of David’s Kata Cabernet Sauvignon blend. This property is nestled in the same neighborhood as Spottswoode, and down the street from the family’s Dr. Crane and Las Piedras vineyards. The 2012 Kata blends Cabernet Sauvignon with Petite Sirah from vines that are over 50 years old! Benoit Touquette makes this wine, and if you know how awesome the wines are that he makes for Passenger, Hartwell, and Realm, then you know how amazingly good this wine will be when it’s released this April!

Memento Mori

The past two years, this has been one of our favorite wines of the entire trip! Adam Craun, Hayes Drumwright and Adriel Lares wanted to make a wine from only the best grapes. Yeah, while others say this, these guys actually did it! The grapes come from Beckstoffer Las Piedras, Beckstoffer Dr. Crane, and another killer vineyard on the steep slopes of eastern Oakville, right next to Phelps’ Backus Vineyard! Their winemaker is the young and talented Sam Kaplin, who caught our eye when we first tasted the wines he makes at Arkenstone on Howell Mountain! Sam’s keen eye and deft hand have created a masterpiece that stands apart from other Napa Valley Cabernets, as this showcases rich, dense black fruits, with good tannin structure, floral aromatics, and just enough acidity to make our mouths water. The newly released 2012 (#241990) has just landed, and it received 95 points from Robert Parker…very limited!

Pulido Walker

Two of the unstuffiest (is that a word?) people in Napa are Mark Pulido and Donna Walker. They…are…appreciative; of everything they have in life. They appreciate the hard work from their employees, the loyalty of their direct customers, and the partnership with their restaurants and retailers. They’re also pretty cool and down to earth, and that makes us want to see them succeed even more! Their winemaker is Thomas Brown, who has made 100 point wines at Schrader, and even makes the wines at Maybach and Outpost. The newly-released 2012 Panek Vineyard Cabernet Sauvignon (#249330) comes from a small vineyard near Vineyard 29, Morlet, and Revana. Earning 95 points from Robert Parker, this is already close to selling out!

Shafer Vineyards

I’m not gonna lie; this is always one of my favorite stops of the weekend! Shafer rolls out the red carpet, often showing the current vintage and one older vintage of Chardonnay, Merlot, Relentless, and One Point Five Cabernet. Oh…and they pour 5 different vintages of their Hillside Select Cabernet Sauvignon, along with their PNV offering! I was amazed at how youthful the 2004 Relentless Syrah was showing, and the tremendous purity of the 2012 One Point Five Cabernet (#259830). Their Red Shoulder Ranch Chardonnay sells out every year, and I will go out on a limb and state that the 2013 Chardonnay (#259600) is the best Chardonnay I have ever tasted from Shafer! Run, don’t walk, to get this wine!

Want to hear more, or learn about some of the other gems we found in Napa, including some first-time releases from new wineries you haven’t heard of? Then come on in and speak with Dan or Zach!