TN: 1999 Dunn Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain

• 1999 Dunn Vineyards Cabernet Sauvignon Howell Mountain - USA, California, Napa Valley, Howell Mountain (1/4/2020)
  To have a great experience with a particular wine you need a few major elements; proper btl age for that wine, and too often slighted - the right amount of air / decant and whenever possible, a prefect pairing. We had that tonight with this '99 Dunn HM! I opened this 4 hours before leaving for Capital Grill. Finding it a little closed I decanted immediately removing 1/2 a shot glass of sludge in the process. My high neck fill became a high shoulder fill:). Left it in the decanter for 2-1/2 hours and back in the btl with cork still out. Upon arrival at CG I removed the cork and took a test pour. Deep ruby with slight ambering on the edges. Nose awesome, palate lovely! We started drinking in earnest about 45 minutes later with the best restaurant steaks I’ve had, bar none. The Dunn was singing! Major cigar box & light cedar on the nose. The palate was fresh & lively with a cornucopia of intense Left Bank BDX flavors; dark raspberry, dark chocolate, tobacco leaf, cedar, graphite and mineral. I didn’t note the Alc but someone else on CT states 13.3%. Ah, the good old days before too many CA Cabs became ports. I regret never buying Dunn on release as the HM along with Ridge MB & old Mondavi Reserves have become some of my favorite Cabs, bar none. Picked this pristine, perfectly aged btl up this past summer. What a find and what a killer pairing with steak! 96pts+ (96 pts.)

Posted from CellarTracker

Thanks for the TN. One of my top five favourite producers. Still working through the last of my 1980s HM.

Dunn HM is one of my Cali favs as well. Mondavi too.

Love the note Craig. A good friend brought an '82 to dinner at our house last month. Blew every other wine away. I said I thought that wine is what every left bank Bordeaux aspires to. I think they have always been reasonably priced because most people do not have the patience.

Thanks for the TN. Had a 1987 last year (my birth vintage), which was spectacular.

Great notes Craig. We’ve found the 90’s Dunn wines we’ve tried seem young and you’ve described the flavors I enjoyed but couldn’t correctly describe. Thank you.

Let me add my voice to the all hail Dunn chorus.

Two questions: (1) Has anyone had an over the hill Dunn, or does such a thing even exist? I have had some from the mid 80s that weren’t even tired. (2) Do folks find a discernible difference between the Howell and Napa bottlings? Honestly, I haven’t.

I’ve gone through many bottles of the 86, 87 and 88 HM and I’ve only had one bottle (of the 88) that was getting tired.

I also had the 87 Napa a few years ago and it was excellent, although perhaps a step or two behind the HM. The 87 HM is legendary: without a doubt my favourite vintage. It used to be affordable on the secondary market; not so affordable these days though.

Also: about 3 years ago a Toronto tasting group did a blind tasting of about 8 vintages of HM with two bottles of the Napa bottling thrown in the mix. No one at our table could pick out the Napa. I’ll see if I can find the list of vintages and post it here later today. IIRC the Napa bottles were quite young. They were the equal of the HM, but I wonder if they will age as well as the HM. The 87 Napa was wonderful, but I don’t have much other experience with 30 year old Dunn Napa.

Oh and one other thing: the Dunn Petite Sirah from the 1990s is also amazing. And not easy to find.

It is, and please don’t out-hunt me!

I mentioned this in another thread, but…my wife spent a couple weeks in Bordeaux this fall and went to a wine shop that did tastings of some great Bordeaux wines and had a great time. (Plus, they shipped her wine purchases, yay!) The store manager chatted with her as they tasted some nice back vintages and he mentioned that his favorite wine in all the world was…Dunn Cabernet.

Dunn is really world class.

I believe you can still order a few vintages of the Petite Sirah directly from Dunn if you call them. But they are not cheap.

I found the list of wines from that tasting in Nov 2015. I had it backwards: most of the wines were the Napa Valley, and they threw two Howell Mountain into the mix. We knew the vintages that were being poured, but didn’t know which was which, nor did we know which two were the Howell Mountain.

They poured the following:

1991 Napa Valley
2002 Napa Valley
2003 Napa Valley
2004 Napa Valley
2005 Napa Valley
2006 Howell Mountain
2007 Howell Mountain
2008 Napa Valley
2009 Napa Valley

As I noted, we weren’t able to identify which were the HM and which were the Napa Valley. It was easy to identify which one was the 1991, though.

Great note, Craig. Thanks. Another Dunn HM fan.