I haven’t seen any notes on CH wines lately, so thought I’d post on this one. Picked it up at Costco yesterday for about $13. It is a Chalk Hill Cab. My wife was ragging on me for opening it tonight-“You have this ridiculous cellar and you pour me this?” kind of thing. I just wanted to taste it to see if I want to buy more.
Very young. Nice acid balance. On the nose, it’s cassis and blue fruits and very nice vanilla oak notes Very dark color. It’s a little “light” in the mouth in texture, but I popped and poured it. I’m thinking it will pick up some weight with bottle time and some decanting. Subtle tannins-it’s all fruit on the front palate and then some smooth tannins kick in on the back palate. Very long finish. 30+ seconds. Chocolate, blueberry, red cherry, cassis, and a hint of tobacco in terms of flavor profile.
I really like this wine. I’m back to Costco on Monday to buy a case. I’d probably let it sit for about six months before coming back to it, and maybe save a six pack for a couple of years to see it get better. You could do a lot worse buying $30 cabs at retail.
Like many people, I’m a sucker for a good deal. When he says “This is from a $100+ program” and you can find it in the low $20’s, that’s powerful marketing.
Can anyone in the know share what these high-end wineries are releasing to him? Is it truly just excess, or is it inferior juice?
John - this is actually a wine we make with a grower partner. One of the misconceptions we have been trying to reverse is that we simply buy winery bulk overstock, reblend and sell. That is how we started but its no longer the case - we make well over half our wine now through a series of partnerships with wineries, custom-crush facilities, and growers - some with wineries or facilities, some not. We lease thousands of barrels (added just shy of 1MM of new wood just last February) which we deploy around the state and we write all our fermentation protocols and have an on-staff viticulturalist to monitor vineyards. I talk myself blue in the face but the US Wine Press just wants to play the angle of the vulture that swoops in and picks off high-end bulk from distressed wineries - which is rarely the case, even over the last few years (which, I have to admit, even surprised me - I assumed we would be buying whole cellars worth of wine from upside down entities but it really only happened twice - once with Havens (which wasn’t really downturn related at all) and again with another winery that shall remain unmentioned).
To answer your question on whether it is first run or inferior juice is, well, it depends. I guess the word inferior is pretty relative so really not useful here. I do buy component lots that didn’t fit into the blend for whatever reason - they are not usually as good as the finished wine from the producer but no component wine ever is - that’s why it’s a component. Once we blend them out (we have access to hundreds of lots of bulk wine that we own at any given time) we feel we more often than not make better wine. We also buy final blend wine which we pay top dollar for and those situations are typically to provide cash flow back to wineries for bottling purposes, hiccups, etc or to rightsize inventories. We also buy mistakes - one of which was a $50 Cabernet out of Happy Canyon/Santa Ynez that had elevated VA or Brett (I can’t remember which) and once filtered no longer made the cut for $50 Cabernet. They blended it out with other components into a Meritage and sold it to us. We finalized a blend and sold it for $12.
We “bought” (in our partnerships we really don’t by fruit but rather price it out in gallons with various contractual quality stipulations and then pay for it as it goes into the bottle) 1,000’s of tons of fruit in 2011 from all over the state but 100’s of tons out of Napa. I think you’ll see the strength of the program - flexibility in sourcing - reflected in our 2011 Napa Cabs…all south facing, well-drained, elevated sites that could withstand a few inches of rain which fell as we expected it would. I am confident that, once run through an optical sorter, we pulled some of the best fruit in Napa Valley this year out of Meteor, Heimark and Stagecoach vineyards to mention a few. The rest of our sourcing focused on regions we could bring in before the rain…Lodi, Lake, and MOnterey and other central coast areas with great fruit at great prices.
I honestly have never had a bad Cameron Hughes Cabernet. I think he does the best with this varietal. Some killer QPR. Had the 287 last night with some skirt steaks. Well made very classic Napa Cab.
I am still drinking Lot 143 (Howell Mountain) and Lot 116 (Oakville/Rutherford) since I backed up the truck when they were released. At $18.70 each it is a great QPR.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I was under the impression that Cameron Hughes sources finished wines from producers that have excess and does not actually make wine.
HI Paul - your impression is understandable but incorrect. We make over half of our production under the aforementioned partnership scenario’s…we also buy wines just off fermentation and barrel them down appropriately, particularly with Napa reds…and then we source the traditional way your are thinking of which is bulk lots of finished products.
As we have grown it has become necessary to have a “quiver” of production methods to handle differing supply scenarios…we love the partnership model because it allows us to make wine to our spec and not have to pay for it until we put it in the bottle. Like a bulk wine deal but we control the quality. That said, nothing Europeans haven’t been doing for decades if not centuries…