Discover the hidden stories of Napa Valley wine and the people behind it -- plus expert analysis from our columnists and more with our weekly email newsletter.
A glass of wine. (File photo)
Recently harvested Cabernet grapes. (File photo)
For years, I spent far too much money trying wines that other reviewers gave high scores to. I wasn’t happy about this.
Between about 2000 and 2007, I discovered that most of the expensive/high-scoring wines I bought were pretty woeful, and that I was wasting my time trying to figure out why I disliked them.
After a while, I realized why I differed from other reviewers: I seek more from the vineyard than they do; they seek more from the winemaker than I do. And there was balance in winemaking. I demand it.
Also, I believe less can be more. Most 100-point wines strike me as projects best defined as “more is less.” Or in other words, too much of one otherwise good thing can be terrible.
Before reviewing most red wines, I prefer to see the technical details first. About 90% of the time, I don’t need to taste a wine to know I can’t recommend it. The numbers are off. High pH levels and high alcohols are tipoffs to unbalanced wines. Tasting them for more than 40 years proved this.
Dan Berger served, double-blind, 11 Cabernets and a Cabernet Franc to a group of 12 professionals, all Sonoma County winemakers who are in the Denny Martin Vintage Hills tasting group in Sonoma County. See who came out on top.
In rare instances when I seek a sample for review, some wineries are reluctant to accede, thinking I won’t be fair. But oddly, this is precisely what I aim to be – as fair-minded and objective as anyone in this line of work can be. It ain’t easy trying to be objective and dispassionate when it comes to wines that I view as either classic or a dud. But I try.
I do this with wines that I won’t drink. When a wine is well made and has other attributes that I think ought to appeal broadly to others, but is in a style I dislike, I often recommend it. Several Chardonnays come to mind.
In the last 15 years, I’ve decried what I view as the deterioration of many Napa Cabernets. Some people view me as simply an angry gadfly. But when an iconic wine achieves as much stardom and costs outrageous sums, as do most Napa Cabs, it invites serious critics to employ electron microscopes to analyze what’s up.
Very few critics do this. Most simply vote their gut. I cast my vote based on personality and science and many other issues.
What I see lately is a new style of Cabernet that has nothing to do with the Cabernets I knew as a pup. Decades ago, Cab was dry and made to age. Almost all of them did. I can prove it. I have a cellarful of Cabs from the 1960s to 1990s that are still startlingly fine to this day.
(Last week’s example: 1987 St. Supery, Dollarhide Vineyard, Rutherford. Sensational and balanced. Alcohol: 12.5%.)
Many of today’s Cabs are flabby, overripe, clumsy. Some are sweet! Really. Almost none of them will age. I won’t speak of specific brands, even the worst offenders. As it is, my frankness has already maddened lots of people, some of whom are trying to get us all to spend hundreds of dollars for one bottle of something I think is a mere parody of what it used to be.
Recently here, I wrote that most Napa Valley Cabs were “on the rocks,” perhaps even literally. Houses mimic each other’s styles and most of the wines are simplistic. After that earlier article ran, I received calls and emails from a few folks who thought I was unfair. (Although the article included quotes from several industry people who agreed with me.)
To decant or not to decant? Dan Berger explores the complexity of the question: when does it help and when does it harm wines?
One person who challenged me owns a winery and said that not all Napa wineries had shifted their Cabs to the dark side and that, “some of us still make wines that respect the soil, respect the grape, and respect the history of this land.” I agreed.
I’ve been writing about wine since 1976. For the first 20 or so years of that journey, Napa Cabs still smelled and tasted pretty much like Cabernet, aged like Cabernet, and had a persona that at its best represented Napa Valley in all its celebrated subregional nuances.
It began to change between 1994 and 1997. I’ve written extensively about why and how changes took place, forcing many people, most of them newcomers to wine, to adopt the current archetype in which Cab is accepted as this New and Better Thing – even though I see it as having pretty much lost its way.
This isn’t a new message for me, or for Dr. Richard Peterson, now 91, who made some of the finest wines in the history of the Napa Valley, and who pointedly suggested recently that it isn’t too late for Napa to re-discover the pathway back to the glory days of the 1960s though 1980s.
Dick Peterson and I will be tasting through several Napa classics of the past late this month, about which we’ll have a story here.
We are far from being the only ones who revere Napa Cabs’ historic age-worthiness. But there are few people willing to risk ridicule by saying so out loud.
After my prior diatribe here, an emailer questioned my thesis. “How could wines that sell for $500 a bottle be as bad as you say they are?” he asked. I wrote back, “who wrote the rule that said the price of something was an indication of its quality?”
With my obsession for the statistical transparency of Cabernet, it’s difficult for me to be objective about some of the most expensive wines in the valley, mainly because after looking at their technical details, it’s obvious that they are anything but classic. Some verge on downright awful.
(A side note here: It’s relevant to point out that Robert Mondavi Winery is launching a new wine called Naturally Sweet Pinot Noir. Is Cabernet next?)
I find it amazing that so many of today’s well-heeled young buyers don’t seem to mind paying exorbitant prices for such mediocrity as 100-point “winners.”
Part of it comes down to the fact that most of the people spending that kind of money have never experienced the older classics that once were a Napa standard. Most of those older wines aren’t easy to obtain today. And even if you found one, chances are its storage wasn’t particularly excellent.
Acclaimed wine regions often gain such strong reputations for one grape variety, other grapes they also do well with are overlooked, but these "second bananas" are well worth seeking out.
Back in the day, Cabernet was fairly tart and tannic, a condition most wine lovers accepted as normal. We all intended to age the wines for a few years, softening tannins and acid.
In today’s instant-gratification society, there’s no place for wine aging. It takes time, patience, and an understanding that these wines will reward such a strategy. But if you are a young, recently wealthy, and particularly person, you don’t have time for aging wine.
To shorten the timeframe about being socially “with it,” all you have to do to join the club is buy a few 100-point wines and display your good taste when serving them to people who aren’t particularly knowledgeable about classic wines.
(Oh, and leave the price tag on the bottle. And make sure to mention the score that the wine received.)
You need not know much to employ this strategy. It just takes a lot of money and doesn’t require much time, which requires faith.
Years ago, winemakers figured out that this New Better Cab leads people to consume wines earlier, so today they make them as drinkable as possible. No aging needed.
However, it’s nearly impossible to make an extremely drinkable product and one that also requires a decade or more in the bottle. You make either one or the other. By choosing to make Cabs opulent and instantly drinkable to young buyers, winemakers opted against age-ability.
The result: Cabernet is less like Cabernet than it has been and far too many Cabernets taste like all the other Cabernets – almost as if they were being made by a widely understood formula in which the vineyard plays far less of a role than it did in the past.
Remember when there was a true distinctiveness from Heitz Martha’s Vineyard Cabs? The mint/eucalyptus? Remember when Stag’s Leap made Cabernets with silky tannins? Recall when Rutherford made Cabs scented like sage and Turkish pipe tobacco? When Yountville and Oak Knoll Cabs had traces of spiced cassis?
Today regional distinctiveness is blunted on purpose. All anyone asks lately is, “how many points did it get?”
And the highest scores come from critics who are awed by concentration, succulence, ostentation, power, and aromatic elements related to things that are roasted (coffee beans, bacon, nuts...). (Sometimes they give a high score merely on the basis of the name of the winery.)
Sure, we sought some of those elements in the 1970s and 1980s, but always within the context of structure and balance. Alas, neither of those traits carries much weight with most of today’s 100-point number mongers.
Droppers, graduated cylinders and pitchers accompanied the bottles of wine supplied by Honig Vineyard & Winery for its event Blend Your Own Cabernet, in which some 35 guests experimented with combinations of four different red wine varieties.
After trying out various blends of grapes, guests at Honig Vineyard & Winery's Blend Your Own Cabernet on Sunday bottled their favorite combinations to take home as customized versions of cabernet sauvignon or Bordeaux blends.
David Francel of Sonoma pours drops of wine into a mixture of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and cabernet franc during Blend Your Own Cabernet, a winemaking demonstration hosted by Honig Vineyard & Winery for about 35 guests.
About 35 visitors came to Honig Vineyard & Winery on Sunday morning for Blend Your Own Cabernet, an exercise in blending cabernet sauvignon with other varieties of wines.
Sarah Hartstein (left) and Laura Kerepesi measure different varieties of wine by the milliliter while creating customized blends Sunday morning during Blend Your Own Cabernet, a demonstration at Honig Vineyard & Winery in Rutherford.
Keith Hartstein hand-labels the Bordeaux blend he crafted at Sunday’s Blend Your Own Cabernet event at Honig Vineyard & Winery in Rutherford. Hartstein’s custom bottle contained 70 percent cabernet sauvignon grapes, 22 percent merlot, 4 percent petit verdot and 4 percent cabernet franc.
Honig Vineyard & Winery hosted a Blend Your Own Cabernet event in September. The Napa Valley wine industry is becoming adept at building loyal customers by offering winery experiences, a report says.
Dan Berger lives in Sonoma County, where he publishes Vintage Experiences, a subscription-only wine newsletter. Write to him at winenut@gmail.com. He is also co-host of California Wine Country with Steve Jaxon on KSRO Radio, 1350 AM.
Discover the hidden stories of Napa Valley wine and the people behind it -- plus expert analysis from our columnists and more with our weekly email newsletter.
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A glass of wine. (File photo)
Recently harvested Cabernet grapes. (File photo)
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