Cabernet Sauvignon

I just realized in looking at the vineyard composition of this wine, it is 100% St Helena appellation.  I feel like we keep doing this, the 2021 Napa for instance was 100% Oakville.  Ultimately, it’s a good sign, always chasing the best appellations every vintage.  St Helena in 2023 was particularly strong given the abundant spring rains and cool growing conditions throughout the warmest parts of the summer.  This edition is approximately 50% Panek, 20% Vidovich Lane and 30% Dean York, a new western St Helena site that fell into our laps at the last minute.  More due to size than quality, we were able to be very selective in how we harvested blocks in 2023.  All 4 Panek blocks saw their own tanks and we were able to cut VLV into two pieces based on vigor.  Only the absolute top lots made the single vineyard cut but with quality near an all-time high, that selection became more subjective than objective at times.  For the Napa wine, the default criteria centered around drinkability, freshness and a slightly less structured build.  There’s plenty of power here but there’s also a balancing red fruited note.  The abundant fruit of the year is joined by savory notes of tobacco, sandalwood and creosote.  Acidity provides a nice lightness to the palate.  This as the starter wine is a great indicator for just how great 2023 turned out to be.

I’m hoping this proves to be a one-off version of our Napa bottling.  Comprised entirely of Panek Vineyard and Vidovich Lane Vineyard, both in St. Helena, this wine received quite the upgrade of fruit sourcing due to the vintage.  Both wines were a hair short of making the single vineyard cut due more to the sameness imparted on sites by the vintage rather than overall quality.  Panek just didn’t taste like the Paneks of the past.  Sitting in roughly the hottest part of the valley, the heat really limited site expression here.  The same could be said about VLV but due more to vine age than precise location.  What these wines produced were really great examples of the St. Helena AVA rather than individual sites within.  They both featured bright red and blue fruits, sweet tobacco, sandalwood, caramelized brown sugar and a varietal herbaceousness that usually takes a few years to come out in bottle.  Color here can be deceptive, checking in at a decidedly medium hue that belies the palate impact that follows.  As these lots rested in barrel, structure and fruit density increased every time we sampled the wines culminating in a layered, forward fruited wine that well represents the vintage experience for the entire Napa Valley.

I guess this could technically be called Rivers-Marie Oakville since it is comprised mainly of Buselli Vineyard and Oakville Terraces, two A+ pieces of dirt in the eastern hills of Oakville. A 10% addition of a small block of Panek rounds out the blend showcasing a generously red fruited top note to accompany the raw, black fruited, purple colored power of Oakville. Mint, eucalyptus, white pepper and licorice veer the aromatics toward savory and give an initial glimpse of the structure of the vintage. Black walnut, cassis, cedar wood, white flowers and dried herbs dominate the palate leading to a firm but sweet tannic grip that pulls out and frames the finish. It’s hard to believe the components of this wine would be considered the declassified lots from the vintage given the seriousness of the wine and its completeness. As we now have produced 20 vintages at Rivers-Marie, it has become clear to us that vintages (and wineries for that matter) are best judged by their entry level bottlings not their top.

The base here is incredibly similar to the 2018 version but what sets it apart is the addition of the Buselli Vineyard from Oakville. We debated for quite some time about bottling this new site separately but, in the end, we felt it wasn’t quite good enough. It was close so it definitely takes the quality of the Napa bottling up a couple notches. It’s in the same neighborhood as Oakville Terraces so here it adds a black fruited streak plus some some crushed rock and white flower notes. The same lots from Panek, Herb Lamb and Oakville Terraces make up the rest of the blend with Panek contributing the fruit, Herb Lamb a top note of varietal herbaceousness and Lore the minerality. There’s plenty of acidity to frame all these different elements and give the wine focus. As we mentioned in the opening, there are no mediocre sites represented in the entire 2019 line up and the appellation wine provides best testament to this fact. We never set out to source appellation quality vineyards. We only want to grab what interests us and then sort through the lots as they develop in barrel. This makes our appellation Cabernet one of the best QPRs in the valley.

I can't think of a better way to create our Napa blend than by combining lots from Herb Lamb, Lore and Panek. This is the first time we have had enough of certain sites to declassify significant portions into our appellation bottling. Not only does this help this bottling but it has made Herb Lamb and Panek much stronger wines when compared to their 2016 editions. The 2018 Napa bottling feels very complete at this young age and breaking down this attribute is very simple when looking across the components: Panek provides the fruit, Lore provides the structure and Herb Lamb contributes some varietal savory-ness. It’s hard to say if any particular vineyard component dominates the blend because you can sense shared characteristics from all the sites across the entire spectrum of the wine. Black fruits dominate the aromatic and the palate. There’s a blue fruited acidity that punches in late showcasing the coolness of the vintage. Savory elements weave through the whole experience creating a classic Napa mouthfeel, something more akin to the wines from the early 90s than the early 00s. Tannins here are medium/medium plus which makes this very drinkable upon release. As with all appellation wines, we hope this gives you good insight into the quality and character of the vintage. We think you will be very pleased with what you see.

The composition of our 2016 Napa appellation wine is very similar to the 2015 version: clones 4 and 6 from Panek, the lower block of Lore, Pellet Vineyard in St Helena and two blocks from Kennedy Vineyard on Franz Valley School Road in Calistoga. Even with no Herb Lamb or Larkmead in the blend, the wine still provides an early drinking insight into the character of the four vineyard designated bottlings from 2016. If 2015 was defined by fruit sweetness, this vintage is framed by ripe tannin. The fruit is a bit darker as well, leaning toward black fruits and thus a more serious seeming offering. The various defining attributes of the vineyard sources pop up throughout while experiencing the wine. The abundant fruit and acid cut of Panek’s valley floor location, the all black fruit, crushed rock minerality of Lore’s east Oakville range, the loamy purple fruit of Pellet’s west St. Helena corridor and the blue fruited cool climate savory-ness of Kennedy’s western Calistoga siting. Completeness best describes the overall experience. Fruit, tannin and acidity all come in waves of equal proportion while the tasting experience follows seamlessly from start to finish.

The 2023 Calistoga is roughly 50% Larkmead and 50% Peterson Family Vineyard, the home ranch for Switchback Ridge Winery.  This will be our last year with Larkmead after a very successful 12 year run as a grape buyer.  You’ll start to hear some consistent themes in these notes as they progress.  The coolness of the vintage allowed us to produce our most successful Calistoga bottling since 2019.  Usually, we’d be looking to pick these sites the first half of September after battling heat through most of the growing season.  Instead, Peterson was picked October 7th and Larkmead October 24th.  The extended hangtime has created a wine that’s more black/purple fruited than years past but one that still contains all the herbal notes of past Calistoga bottlings.  Aromas of walnut husk, sage and grilled bread hit first followed by more dried herbs, blackcurrants and tobacco.  Crushed rocks and purple flowers come up at the end framed by the structure of the vintage.  This may be our last Calistoga bottling for the foreseeable future, but it feels like a great way to go out. 

Larkmead may have been the second best Cabernet we made in 2022.  It was also the last lot we harvested for the vintage, running counter to what most people have said about the more successful vineyards in 2022.  The deeper soils and 25+ year old vines allowed this site to withstand the week of heat in September, recover and click back on to achieve full ripeness.  This hang time also allowed for full development of tannin and color making this more brooding and darker hued than its Napa appellation cousin.  The addition of the older vine clone 7 from Peterson Family Vineyard adds red fruits and a dusty gravel note to the black walnut tinged Larkmead profile.  This has the open early aromatics of the vintage that lead into a generous (are you sensing a theme?) front palate of blackberries, brambly spice, incense and cassis.  Right now the fruit of Peterson really dominates the savory of the Larkmead but with age I’m guessing that will reverse.  The structure of the Larkmead is what helps the finish fan out and prolong picking up a few toasty barrel notes on the back end. 

In an effort to make this more of a true appellation blend, we have added sources outside of Larkmead to the Calistoga blend.  Being offered older vine clone 7 from Switchback Ridge and some mature clone 337 from Kelly Fleming’s estate next to Eisele was too hard to pass up even if we didn’t know exactly what we’d do with them when we first signed up.  These two lots plus the Olmo and Jenkins clone blocks from Larkmead were all vinified and barreled separately to properly evaluate the wines before any blending took place.  In January of this year we tasted each and jotted down quick notes.  The Switchback was cassis and blueberry with bay leaf providing a savory edge.  The Kelly Fleming featured cherries, plums and menthol.  Both Larkmead lots had their classic walnut husk aromas with spring flowers, black cherries, black raspberries and powdered baking spices rounding out the finish.  All four wines were worthy of the Calistoga bottling which didn’t surprise us given each site’s location and pedigree.  The resulting final wine gives us the best of each:  baking spices, violets, and red fruits on the nose followed by a saturated palate of darker fruit, spice box, graphite and loamy earth.  Where this wine has always leaned toward the higher toned and savory, these two new exceptional additions pump up the fruit to achieve greater balance, increased texture and density without cutting into the more ethereal elements of the previous bottlings.

The Calistoga always reminds us of what wines from Napa used to taste like. It’s more savory then sweet, more structured and reticent than fruity and open knit. This bottling achieved a new level last year with the addition of the small Jenkins clone block next to our original Olmo clone section. The two lots were picked, fermented and barreled individually to make sure they were compatible before final blending. As much as we focus on the clonal selection across the blocks, the thing that really stands out is the site. Larkmead for us has always produced aromatically intense, inward focused wines that tend toward a walnut husk, dried herbs and tobacco varietal expression. These wines are always the least complete in the lineup at release but then quickly fill out and find their balance after a year or so in bottle. It takes a while for wines from this site to find their fruit and throw off some initial structure. The density of the 2019 helps balance the structure and provides ample buffering for all the savory notes of licorice, cedar wood, forest floor and violets. Fruit comes up in the end after an hour or so in decanter and features elements of crème de cassis, black raspberries and blueberries. There’s a dustiness to the finish that adds grip and texture and an element of perceived ageability to the 2019 Calistoga.

Keeping with the theme of expansion, we added another block of older vines from Larkmead in 2018. Neighboring our original block of Olmo clone is a tiny block of Jenkins clone Cabernet resting in the same Cortina soil. We have always loved this clone of Cabernet having worked with it at Outpost’s True Vineyard and Gemstone Estate. There’s nothing else quite like it in the world of Cabernet. It manages to be both exotic and wildly singular while still coming across as very complete. It has proven to be a very nice complement to what we’ve been working with from Larkmead since 2012. The color here is a bit darker than normal with mostly fruit tones first present on the nose. That familiar muscular walnut husk, roasted nut quality of Larkmead pokes through quickly though placing this wine stylistically in more of a classic era of California wine. Where in the past this wine could be considered the “lightest” of the lineup, the 2018 shows the power of the vintage and a marked improvement from the addition of the new block. The fruit is still purple leaning and the ethereal notes of the past still pop out on palate entry but a weightier middle kicks in almost immediately with notes of sage, graphite, cassis, lavender and a brambly spice note. The tannin starts earlier too adding texture and a dusty, baker’s chocolate note. In the past, I felt this bottling would always need a few years in the cellar to present a complete palate expression. Not so here with the addition of our little Jenkins block. All these additional blending options from all these great sites prove in 2018 that sometimes more is more.

I love the old school Napa feel at the core of this wine. It smells and tastes like some of the great California wines from the 60s and 70s only with better farming and oak treatment. The first thing that greets you here is the savory character of the varietal. Due in equal parts to the greatness of the Larkmead site and the uniqueness of the Olmo clone, the modernness of the framing of this wine is meant only as a complement to its traditional center. Damp soil, bay leaves, black walnut and tobacco leaf begin the aromatic profile. Tasting it from tank a week before bottling, it reminded me of the mid-90s Araujo Eisele Vineyard wines. The palate takes on a dusty, minty character featuring plum, cedar and cassis. There’s a stuffing to this wine that has been lacking in years past. The vintage gets a lot of the credit for that. This is the new benchmark for our Calistoga bottling.

It’s nice to welcome our old friend back after a one year hiatus.  Panek has reemerged after a difficult 2022 that saw all blocks declassified to our Napa bottling.  It turns out to be a great year for a
comeback.  Panek always fares best in more structured years, adding a layer of complexity to the wine that the soil and climate in northern St Helena rarely contributes.  The general leaning for this site has always been a mix of red and black fruits, brown sugar, espresso roast and blackcurrants but here there’s a textured mid-palate that comes up through the tannin of the vintage adding dimension and more herbal character.  This may also be a vine age thing now that these blocks are nearing their 20 year mark. Scorched earth, charcoal, white flowers and burnt sage fill up the aromatics before the generosity of the area kicks in giving the wine a decadent turn.  The 2023 vintage stamp comes on strong at the end curtailing the youthful exuberance of the wine and adding a weightier note to the finish.  It’s good to see this wine back in the fold and we have no doubt it will take its place among the greatest Panek bottlings to date.

Years like 2021 are always the best expressions of Panek.  Fruit is a given here as is acidity so the structured vintages present the most complete versions of wines from this site.  The tannins here also translate to an increased savory edge adding saddle leather, tobacco, black pepper and wet stones to add to all the caramelized brown sugar and maple syrup common to this vineyard.  Vine age probably contributes to this increased seriousness and completeness as our original blocks close in on 20 years of age and the more mature blocks in the back we now receive hit 30.  There’s a minerality in this wine that separates it from the other wines in the lineup.  A creosote/charcoal note comes up in the finish framed by all purple fruits and a finish that makes this wine hard not to revisit.  The balance is what really grabs you creating a spectacular evenness that runs from entry to the very last note.

We continue to add a bit more of the mature blocks of Panek into the final blend. 2018 saw the addition of three barrels from an older clone 191 block and we did the same here plus a few barrels each from clone 4 and clone 7 blocks. There’s a seriousness to these original Panek plantings that complements the 5 acres of younger vines in the front of the parcel. I don’t think it’s just vine age, it definitely has something to do with the soil where you see more evidence of old river bed on the surface of the site. The cordon training here also contributes a naturally smaller crop that is black fruited and deeper in color. We now ferment up to 8 blocks individually before making the final decision as to what goes into the single vineyard wine and what ends up in the Napa blend. The 2019 opens with notes of smoke, cassis, dried herbs and graphite. The palate is much darker than previous years with blackberry compote, currants, crème de cassis and violets leading into a long, textured finish that has plenty of tannin to buffer all the fruit inherent in the site.

Panek Vineyard’s early ripening nature was a blessing in 2017. All 5 blocks we work with achieved full ripeness giving us quite a bit to choose from in this vintage. That coupled with continually improving farming gave us more quantity than we hoped for pre-harvest. We harvest clones 169, 7, 337, 4 and 6 from Panek and in the past there were a few blocks that never were considered for the finished blend. In 2017, we could have put it all in and been extremely happy with the result. Knowing the vintage’s reputation, we choose to be a little more selective and used parts of the 169, 7 and for the first time ever 337. That block continues to make incredible leaps forward producing what looks to be our best block of Panek in 2018. This edition comes across as a mix of everything that preceded it. There’s good red/black/blue fruit sweetness, a nice caramelized brown sugar component, wet stones, violets and smoke. This like the Napa, has a little bit of an old school feel with some savory notes of sage, liquid minerals and roasted meats. It is a difficult vintage to name check but we like the completeness and drinkability of this wine just as we did with the 2011 version, another challenging year where this site shined.

Better informed farming continues to elevate not just the blocks in this bottling but also all the blocks we harvest at Panek. It makes our blending decisions more difficult each year but that extra work is certainly worth the extra quality in a wine like this 2016. The vineyard does best in muscular years so this version reminds me more of the 2013 as opposed to the 2014 or 2015. There’s more apparent fruit than in the 2013 to stand up to the structure of the vintage. This wine has calmed considerably during its last 6 or so months in barrel. It was a bit brooding for the first year of its life (odd for Panek) but that character only hinted at the concentration contained within. Now that it has unwound a bit, the trademark brown sugar note has emerged but here joined by a blackberry/cassis note. Loamy black soil, dried herbs and sweet tobacco complete the experience by adding a strong sense of varietal character to the mix, another hallmark of the vintage. This is a structured Panek for sure but with all other great 2016s, there is a sense of balance across all components of the wine that provides good early drinkability.

Our first vintage of VLV, the 2021, taught us quite a bit about this site.  We were happy with the effort, but we quickly realized we could do better.  Being a stone’s throw from Dr Crane, there was no reason this shouldn’t be one of the stars of our portfolio every year.  What we did is obvious now in hindsight, we spent more time in the vineyard.  As we watched we saw pockets that struggled, pockets that were overly vigorous and thankfully, a lot in between.  Any vine not in balance we flagged for inclusion in our Napa bottling.  The differences across the board were surprising given this is only a 2-acre site.  At final count, we isolated about 25% of the vineyard for a second pick, putting our arms around only the best sections for the VLV bottling.  Because of this, the 2023 reminds me far more of the wines from Dr Crane than the 2021.  This is pure black fruit driven with little streaks of crushed rock and liquid mineral shot through.  There’s a crystalline quality that feels overly delicate in something so intense but it’s part of what balances the wine and gives it extra dimension.  Where the 2021 had some herbal edges, this leads with pure fruit complemented by iron, cassis, grilled bread and violets.  The addition of VLV a couple years ago perfectly encapsulates what we search for in our Cabernet program, small jewels that represent the best of what Napa Valley has to offer in only its finest appellations.

It’s always exciting to roll out new wines and this year we have the privilege of introducing two new sites to the Rivers-Marie program.  This first vineyard came to us through a friend who was looking for a new home for his family’s fruit in St Helena.  When he called and began describing the location, we said yes before even seeing the site.  Located just to the east of Andy Beckstoffer’s Dr. Crane Vineyard, this 2 acre parcel of clone 30 sits in some of the best soil the upvalley has to offer.  Jet black early in fermenter, it was easy to see this wine would possess the quality to make the single vineyard cut the first year we had our hands on it.  This part of St Helena to me always offers up a darker fruit profile and here that takes the form of chocolate covered blueberries and crème de cassis complemented by tobacco leaf, damp earth, violets and baker’s chocolate.  There’s a great varietal herbaceousness that reminds me of wines from previous eras that gives this bottling more aromatic complexity and a mid-palate scratchiness that adds to the texture.  The tannins are perfectly ripe and pretty tame for this vintage, showcasing a long, silky finish that adds a little graphite, incense and smoke to complete the experience.  This site is something we hope to hold on to for a long time.
the vintage as much as the vineyard.  Black olives, blueberries and blackberries start the palate progression that then leans into some varietal herbiness of rosemary, sage and tapenade.  There’s an iron quality at the very end hinting at the severity of this hillside site but the tannins are plenty sweet enough to prolong and frame the finish.

Oddly enough, the yield at Oakville Terraces in 2022 was pretty good.  This was the only vineyard in our Cabernet program to produce above its historical average.  This is also the main contributor to the success of the site in 2022.  In our experience, bigger crops can withstand heat better.  This was by no means a big year (4.5 tons vs. 6.2 as the biggest) but every little bit helps in an extreme year.  Savory notes dominate the aromatics of the wine led by green tobacco, iron, toasted rosemary and menthol.  The palate has the generosity of the vintage and tends more toward red and black fruits rather than pure black.  It starts out very juicy before the layers of fruit kick in running from blueberry to kirsch to blackcurrants and everything in between.  Some kind of dry chocolate, espresso roast and scorched earth add complexity to the finish before some youthful tannin comes in denoting sense of place.

Oddly enough, the yield at Oakville Terraces in 2022 was pretty good.  This was the only vineyard in our Cabernet program to produce above its historical average.  This is also the main contributor to the success of the site in 2022.  In our experience, bigger crops can withstand heat better.  This was by no means a big year (4.5 tons vs. 6.2 as the biggest) but every little bit helps in an extreme year.  Savory notes dominate the aromatics of the wine led by green tobacco, iron, toasted rosemary and menthol.  The palate has the generosity of the vintage and tends more toward red and black fruits rather than pure black.  It starts out very juicy before the layers of fruit kick in running from blueberry to kirsch to blackcurrants and everything in between.  Some kind of dry chocolate, espresso roast and scorched earth add complexity to the finish before some youthful tannin comes in denoting sense of place.

The only thing that has changed here is the name. This represents the 6th year of our lease of this site and we continue to refine the farming every year. The vineyard was really struggling when we took it over, nutrition, irrigation protocol and canopy management were all neglected under the previous owners. With focus on individual block health, we now feel we have harnessed all the potential of this A+ Oakville site. Oakville Terraces continues to be the most serious wine in the Rivers-Marie Cabernet portfolio. The 2019 is full of pure black fruits, liquid smoke, graphite, scorched earth and espresso roast. The acidity of the vintage cuts through all the structure. It also helps make this the most aromatically lifted version of Oakville Terraces to date. The nose leads with blueberries, crushed rocks, spring flowers and camphor. The texture might be the most intriguing thing about the wine helping to prolong the finish and give the wine a lightness that belies its origin.

I’ve been working with this site since Round Pond purchased it over 10 years ago.  It is now fully replanted and more importantly, mature, in my opinion.  Everything along the western bench of Oakville is prized ground and this is along the elite of that small group.  The question comes up often about the best dirt in Napa and I’ve heard MBar mentioned in a few of these conversations.  Now that we have our arms around the vineyard, I’m starting to see why.  It has the classic balance between power and elegance that sets sites like To Kalon apart from the rest of the valley.  There are all the savory elements you love in Cabernet Sauvignon combined with the fruit unique to the middle of Napa Valley.  Tobacco, smoke, graphite and cassis layer the front part of the palate giving way to purple/black fruits with hints of iron and black olives.  This is already so complex it’s hard to imagine how much better it will get with age.  Site first has always been our motto and the greatness of this wine certainly speaks to the greatness of the dirt in which it was raised.

The high-water mark for the vintage, the 2022 MBar Ranch was one of the rare lots for us that suffered zero heat related issues.  By the time the first really warm day hit, this vineyard was ready to go.  Because of this, you see a very normal for great years dense color saturation, dark garnet/black all the way to the rim.  The full, firm but rich, palate that follows comes as no surprise given the complexion of the wine.  It is also the only wine in the lineup that features a floral aromatic, landing somewhere in spring flowers territory before moving to black olives and savory herbs.  These more delicate features I believe are testament to the intactness of the fruit at harvest.  The fruit profile is blue/black focused on cassis and blueberries before again veering toward savory elements of graphite, pencil lead and crushed stone.  The tannins here are formidable making this and Oakville Terraces the two wines that will benefit most from cellaring.  Given some of the issues with lower structure in 2022, it is refreshing to come across this powerhouse in a vintage where we weren’t sure such wines could exist.

Whereas Vidovich Lane was completely new to me, I had worked with M-Bar for over a decade at Round Pond Winery.  This is a very storied western Oakville bench vineyard having been a part of the reserve program at Mondavi for many decades and even being bottled as a single vineyard wine a few times.  When Constellation purchased Mondavi in the mid-00s, they tasted through all the lots in the cellar and the two purchased wines they most coveted were Horton (source for the fabulous MacDonald wines) and M-Bar.  Anything west Oakville is something to covet but here the site comes with an established pedigree and for me, ten years of experience reestablishing the vineyard and crafting wines that combined all the greatest blocks in this 10 acre parcel.  After losing Herb Lamb in 2020 and feeling we needed another flagship site for our Cabernet program, Miles and Ryan MacDonnell from Round Pond graciously offered to sell us some M-Bar.  This wine comes from the second generation of replanting at the estate and combines clones 685, 15 and 6.  Being closer to the southern edge of the Yountville/Oakville border, this wine currently features more elegance than power focused by a mouthwatering acidity and a mix of dark cherry, plums, mocha and rose petal.  Natural balance is what we always talk about when we taste wines from this western corridor and here is no exception.  Everything feels amplified but in equal proportion.  This one kind of made itself and our main job was to stay out of the way of the site expressing its greatness.

This vineyard really doesn’t need to be reintroduced but it’s hard for us to express how elated we are to have it back in the fold.  All the credit for this incredibly fast turnaround goes to vineyard owner, Jennifer Lamb.  It was her passion for this site that restored it to its former glory so quickly.  Replanted in its original footprint to the same clonal material, we really had no expectations when we harvested the first fruit in 2023.  Herb Lamb has such a site signature, we wondered if that would express itself in such young fruit.  In fermenter and through the first few months of tasting, it really didn’t.  It was only at the 12 month mark that the wine darkened and the aromatics and palate notes began turning herbal leaning into bay leaf, dried mint, lead pencil shavings and sandalwood.  This is always a taut, muscular wine and the 2023 is no exception benefitting from the natural structure of the vintage.  There is fruit here but the intellectual interest of the complexity of both the nose and the palate is really the draw.

This is it for Herb Lamb Vineyard for us for now, the vineyard was lost to fire in 2020. We did harvest fruit from the site last year but the smoke taint was too much to consider bottling it. So, 2019 is it. It’s all a huge tragedy especially for Jennifer Lamb and her family who have put so much energy and passion into growing some of the best fruit in the Napa Valley. As I was writing this though, Jennifer reached out to say Herb Lamb Vineyard was replanted on Bastille Day 2021, amazing news after a tough year. This wine represents the second year of what was supposed to be a 10 year lease of the vineyard. To put a positive spin on things, the two wines that have come out of this lease are two of the best wines I’ve ever made. There’s nothing else in Napa that tastes like Herb Lamb where the resulting wines feel like they have a foot in two different eras. The idea of varietal greenness or herbaceousness is such a frowned upon trait in modern Cabernets. There’s no getting around that here and it makes for such a compelling experience combining the best of Napa’s past with all the current refinement in farming and winemaking. The varietal character is more of a top note of tobacco, olive, pencil shavings and menthol which become more pronounced as the wine opens in the glass. The fruit profile is blue and black fruits complemented with spring flowers, white chocolate and sandalwood. I’d love to see this one day pop up in the portfolio again but barring that, this is a great way to go out.

We couldn't ask for a better vintage to begin our 10-year lease agreement with the venerable Herb Lamb Vineyard. 2018 allowed us the opportunity to wrap our arms around the entire property and get a sense of what blocks were of single vineyard quality and what would be blended into the Napa appellation wine. In the past, Herb and Jennifer had always been generous enough to allow grape buyers a center cut of the best block in the vineyard. This established core became known as HL1 and was easily the best vineyard block we harvested across all Rivers-Marie Cabernet picks in 2018. HL2 came next with some slightly more vigorous vines at the top of the property and some shade effected vines at both ends of the center block. We finished harvest here with HL3, a bottom block that has more vigor than any other spot in the vineyard plus the three bottom rows of the center block which see a lot of run off during the winter. We evaluated these three separate lots after 14 months in barrel. The initial tasting showed HL1 clearly belonged in the single vineyard wine while HL3 was destined for the Napa blend. HL2 showed a lot of promise, question was how much could make the single vineyard cut. Layering in that lot one barrel at a time showed a tremendous amount of improvement to the blend with one barrel added, less so with two barrels and then another marked improvement with three barrels. Blending is rarely linear so continuing to that 3-barrel mark proved very beneficial as we had found the blend we were looking for. HL1 provided the power and pure black fruited elegance we love from this site while HL2 layered in varietally true notes of creosote, grilled meats, camphor, sweet tobacco and olive. We feel fortunate to have the flexibility to blend across these blocks, not only for what it does for the Herb Lamb bottling but also its contribution to making the 2018 Napa the best appellation wine we have ever bottled.

New to our lineup but certainly not new to the legacy of Napa, we are excited to be starting this relationship in such a great vintage. This is one of those wines we knew was destined for greatness when we pressed it. It was intensely aromatic in fermenter and colored up quickly. The palate held quite a bit in reserve while first in barrel taking on more of a linear profile. The last six months in barrel, the wine grew broader, opening up to grilled meats, garrigue, underbrush and blueberries. There is an exotic floral note on the nose that hints at the vineyard’s base of Howell Mountain location. Framing acidity keeps the wine from ever growing tiresome despite its density. There’s nothing that tastes quite like this storied site and we hope to continue to preserve and further the legacy of what Herb and Jennifer Lamb have created here.

You can really see the structure of the vintage in this wine. If any wine in the lineup was going to show what maximum extraction levels in 2018 look like, it was going to be the Lore bottling. The color is a different level of dark compared to everything else this vintage. The initial aromatic notes are very brooding and backward: espresso roast, scorched earth, graphite and blackcurrants. There is some give to the palate with higher toned notes of violets, milk chocolate and cassis fighting their way in. If there is one thing I keep coming back to when tasting this wine, it’s the texture. The many layers that unfold as you move from entry to mid-palate to finish help define this vineyard’s greatness. You see that in all six vintages of the Lore bottling. The eastern Oakville hills location provides this wine with ample tannin, but it is very ripe helping to frame and lengthen the finish. Tannin maturity is what we use to determine our pick date. Color, aroma, flavor and acidity are always abundant in this wine but unlocking the true greatness of the site comes down to the quality of its tannin. Our goal is to produce wines that speak of their place first and this wine and the Herb Lamb that follows couldn’t be greater evidence of the achievement of that in 2018.

If you were to buy only one bottling from the offering, this would be the wine. We started with this eastern Oakville site in 2013 and the wine has gotten better every year. So far we haven’t touched on the color of the vintage. 2016 is one of the darkest years we have ever seen, right there with 2007 and 2013. The 2016 Lore is at another level even in a dense vintage. The wine has a saturated black hue that extends all the way to the rim where it begrudgingly turns to dark garnet. The nose doesn't wait for you to lift the glass, it fills the room as the wine is poured. All the structure of the site is present even in the aromatic. Abundant fruit buffers the structure which is a bit of an anomaly in the vintage. We feel this fruit has always been possible and now with a better handle on the farming, we have unlocked its potential. This vintage at Lore was plentiful so we had the ability to ferment several blocks separately giving us more to blend with and the ability to declassify barrels into the Napa bottling. All palate descriptors center on the black-fruited nature of the wine, licorice, creosote, blackberries and crushed rock fill out the middle and the finish. We’ve said it before, we feel very fortunate to be leasing this site. If this wine is an indicator of future potential, we hope to be here for a long time.