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[Editor's Note: Near the outset of each year, I like to post one of Mary-Ewing-Mulligan's wonderful "On My Table" features in a column slot...just to assure that some regular WRO visitors learn what they're missing if they don't scroll down far enough on our "Home" page. If you enjoy this "deep dive" on some Napa Cabs along with Mary's excellent palate and pen, then have a look at our archives--where hundreds more of these await you! ~MF]
I do love a glass of good Napa Valley Cabernet
Sauvignon. I love the refined, elegant examples, and I love the
powerful examples, provided that alcohol and new oak don’t dominate the
wine and the fruit does not taste raisined. But I’m partial to the Cabs
from the Mount Veeder AVA, where vines grow at the highest elevations
in Napa Valley; the growing season is the longest, promising slow,
complete flavor development; and the crop levels average about half that
of other appellations, fostering concentration.
Three wines from Brandlin Estate (formerly called Brandlin Winery) have
me particularly excited. Two of them are labelled as Cabernet
Sauvignon, while the third, called “Henry’s Keep,” is labelled a Red
Wine (although Cabernet dominant),
and all of them are from the fairly cool 2018 vintage. They are all
amazingly smooth and are very flavorful with rich but fresh fruit
expression.
The 2018 Brandlin Estate Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($90) is 80
percent Cabernet Sauvignon blended with Cab Franc, Malbec and Petit
Verdot at 8, 7 and 5 percent, respectively. The deep, dark-fruit aroma
suggests blackberry, black cherry, and cassis, along with smoke,
vanilla, fresh herbs, cocoa/coffee and black tea. The wine is
full-bodied and fills your mouth with the flavor of its fruit, while the
wine’s structure — its firm but sleek tannin and moderately high
acidity — adds character and dimension. You might not believe how silky
and smooth the texture is: it makes the wine rounded, not lean like a
typical Cabernet Sauvignon. This wine will improve over the next
several years, but frankly, I can drink it right now.
Henry’s Keep Proprietary Red Wine ($115) is a blend of four Bordeaux
varieties but anchored by Cab Sauvignon. Its name honors Henry Brandlin
whose family established the estate on Mount Veeder in the 1870’s and
who began grapegrowing in 1926. (In 1998, Henry’s son, Chester,
entrusted the property to the Schmidheiny family who, like the
Brandlins, are a multigenerational Swiss family of winegrowers.) The
grapes for this wine are drawn from the estate’s most remarkable blocks
of vines. In the 2018 wine, the blend runs to 87 percent Cabernet
Sauvignon with 7 percent Malbec, and Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot at 3
percent each.
The 2018 Henry’s Keep offers a complex aroma combining dark fruit such
as blackberry, red fruits such as boysenberry, spicy oak, herbal notes
of mint and menthol and a floral whiff. The wine is darker and denser
in your mouth than the 2018 Estate Cab, with particularly concentrated
fruit interwoven with firm, tight tannins. In the mouth, savory mineral
flavors such as graphite emerge, along with tertiary notes of leather.
The wine is powerful and cries for several years of aging for its
tannin to integrate. And yet even now it is smooth and inviting. Drink
it quickly, and you’ll barely notice those tannins on the rear palate.
But taste it more slowly, and you’ll fully appreciate its minerally
suppleness and its dual face of tannin strength.
The 2018 Brandlin Estate “ThS” Cabernet Sauvignon ($135) is named for
the estate’s owner, Thomas Schmidheiny. Winemaker Steve Rogstad notes
that ThS is always the first wine that he blends. “As we taste through
every barrel, we are looking for the ‘Wow!’ wines.” In 2018, all those
anointed barrels held Cabernet Sauvignon, and for the first time ever,
the wine is entirely from that grape. All the wine’s highlights and
lowlights, its power, and its freshness, are expressions of Cabernet
Sauvignon on Mount Veeder in 2018.
This is a wondrous wine. It is huge, with smooth and silky flesh built
around a structure of ripe tannins and acid depth. Its flavors are as
ripe as can be and yet they express fresh fruit — not baked or roasted
fruit. To me, its nose suggests ripe, dark plum, black currant and
black tea, with spicy and inky mineral notes. The wine enters your
mouth smooth and full, richly flavorful with almost-sweet fruit and then
it builds toward character and power as its tannin emerges to support
the fruit, and ultimately finishes with enormous concentration. This
wine has a great future, even as it defies you to enjoy it now.
Although the 2018 Estate Cabernet Sauvignon is the best bet for earlier
drinking, all three of these wines are remarkable. They are eager to
please and yet as solid and characterful as you want a Napa Valley
Cabernet Sauvignon to be.
2018 Brandlin Estate Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon, Mount Veeder 91 Points
2018 Brandlin Estate Henry’s Keep, Mount Veeder 93
2018 Brandlin Estate “ThS” Cabernet Sauvignon, Mount Veeder 94
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