I recognize this is a recurring thread - but the landscape changes and the answers may change. About 20 years ago things really started to change in Northern California with lots of tiny wineries coming along - this included the cults like Harlan, Screaming Eagle, Colgin. Well, you all know the history. Some of the historic vineyards that went into the early great wines like BV, Beringer, and Mondavi were sold off or leased out to other wineries - now you have the To-kalon properties making some great wines (Schrader) and wineries like Kapcsandy which is on an old Beaulieu site. Of course those big boys became conglomerates in some cases (especially Mondavi) but yet they still make wine that we all kind of derisively ridicule for being recognizable on the steak house lists. My point is sometimes those wines are actually decent. I think back fifteen years ago about the wines I bought. My Bordeaux go to names have not really changed all that much during that time even though the wines have changed some. But what I buy now from California is completely different. Silver Oak, Caymus, Heitz, Opus One, Mondavi Reserve, Sterling Reserve, Joseph Phelps Insignia, Dominus, etc,…Or some of the smaller names that have been around for a long time like Far Niente? Anyone stopped buying wines like Shafer simply because there are better options at half the price?
So my question is are you buying any of these or others? I may pick up a few of the 07 Dominus based on a few positive notes on the board here - it is one that hasn’t gone up in price for over a decade and my experience has always been fairly good.
I’m always curious about Heitz. I get the mailer and it seems like there are tons of vintages available and all at prices that seem oddly high. They are very easy find, too. Yet I never hear of anyone buying. Where does all their wine go???
Are you asking only about Cabernet and Cabernet blends? I don’t buy from any of the ‘old school’ producers - because the last vintage I bought California Cabernet was 1991.
But I still buy ‘old school’ wines from the likes of Rafanelli, Qupé, Kalin, Calera, Smith-Madrone, Mt. Eden, Ridge…
I was thinking more Northern California and specifically Napa Cabs but I am interested in all answers. Certainly Ridge Montebello is an iconic wine that fits the mold of my query.
I still purchase and consume Dunn, Forman and Spottswoode Cabernet’s from Napa. And I also purchase Ridge. I used to buy Montelena, and may pick some of their 2007 Estate.
There are lots of “old school” producers still at the top of their game and well worth adding to the annual purchasing budget. Mayacamas cabernets are still made exactly as they were in 1968 or 1978, and for those with great longevity both on their mother’s and father’s sides of the family, the new releases are about as exciting as Napa cabernet gets for long term cellaring potential. I also very much like the “very grown up” version of Mayacamas merlot- which again ages very well indeed. Their non-malo chardonnays are also very fine, though I do not think that they ever develop the same complexity at their apogees as those from Stony Hill. Speaking of which, Stony Hill’s new cabernet sauvignon (the first vintage sold simply as red table wine) is also terrific and is presently a steal at $25 a bottle out the door of the winery. I was also very impressed with what Philip Togni and his daughter Lisa are doing on Spring Mountain when I was there in mid-January- yet another “old school” winery that has not missed a beat and is making great cabernets for the cellar. In Sonoma, Joseph Swan is also making excellent wines these days that seem to be cut from exactly the same cloth as their wines from the 1970s and I very highly recommend the new releases. Ric Forman seems to be flirting a bit with a new style for his reds, as he has let his ripeness levels climb up notably in the last several vintages, and while I still like the complex and nicely structured style of his wines, he seems to be going for a bit more overt fruitiness up front these days and the wines show a bit of heat on the backend as a result. I suspect that they will age quite differently than his older vintages, and having just drunk a bottle of his '69 Sterling cabernet, I really am a bit disappointed that he has shifted emphasis. My most recent visit to Spottswoode was also a bit disappointing- the wines are solid, but the higher alcohol levels in the cabernets has taken away some of the aromatic and flavor precision in the finished wines to my palate and they too show a bit of uncovered alcohol on the backends. As someone mentioned, Kalin Cellars continues to make brilliant and very ageowrthy wines- and does plenty of the aging ahead of time for us. Just had a very young and stunning 1998 Semillon the other night.
I have been by Heitz Cellars a couple of times in the last several months and really like what they are doing there these days. My overall impression is that the cabernets are very much in the same style that they have always been- though the ripeness here has crept up a bit to 14.5 percent on average for the cabernets (probably inevitable with global warming and a lot of fruit from vineyards in the foothills, rather than up on the mountains in the wines). But as David Heitz was quick to point out, his father, Joe, was always one to pick a bit later than his neighbors and even back in the late '60s and 1970s, the Heitz cabernets were routinely at 13.5 percent, so the change here is not particularly dramatic. Keep in mind that the Hetiz Cabernets have never gone through malolactic, so one has good balancing acidity to keep the wines fresh and cruising along nicely for many decades down the road. I recently did a vertical tasting of their most recent single vineyard cabernet bottling, the Trailside Vineyard, and the first six vintages (1989-1995) were aging beautifully and were spitting images of Heitz cabernets from the decades of the 1970s and 1980s and all were in that 14-14.5 percent range and showing no signs of heat. I also like the non-malo chardonnay here and their new bottling of Sauvignon Blanc is really special and well worth adding to the rotatioin. To my mind, it is hard to say that Martha’s Vineyard, at around $100 per bottle is too expensive, given that it has such an impeccable track record for aging and the wine continues to be made exactly as it was from the first vintage on, as there are an awful lot of relatively new Napa cabernets that cost decidedly more than Martha’s Vineyard and have absolutely no track record for positive evolution in bottle. My gut feeling is that a lot of these high octane newbies are going to implode in bottle long before anyone gets around to pulling them from their cellars to see how they are doing at age ten or fifteen, and there are going to be an awfull lot of pissed off people out there down the road when this happens.
Would love to hear more about the high octane newbies you are referring to. Ten years ago the high octane newbies included wines like 95 Pahlmeyer, 95 Araujo, 97 Bryant, etc which have now clearly stood the test of time. Even wines like Schrader and Foley now have data points going back a decade and reviews seem favorable from what I have tasted.
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